AT&T Dynamic Defense vs AWS Shield: 2026 Comparison
AT&T Dynamic Defense is a commercial distributed denial of service mitigation tool by AT&T Business. AWS Shield is a free distributed denial of service mitigation tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best distributed denial of service mitigation fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams that need DDoS mitigation without managing their own scrubbing centers should use AT&T Dynamic Defense; you're buying carrier-grade infrastructure and 24/7 managed response, not just software. AT&T's network position means attack traffic gets filtered upstream before it reaches your edge, which matters more than detection speed when you're absorbing volumetric floods. The NIST alignment skews toward Detect and recovery readiness rather than prevention architecture controls, so this works best for teams that accept DDoS as inevitable and want fast mitigation, not those betting on stopping attacks before they land.
Teams already deep in AWS who need Layer 3/4 DDoS protection without adding vendors should start with AWS Shield Standard, which covers all customers automatically at no cost. The free tier blocks the majority of common volumetric attacks; Shield Advanced adds behavioral analysis and AWS WAF integration for $3,000 annually, meaningful only if you're absorbing sustained multi-Gbps floods regularly. This is not a replacement for application-layer DDoS mitigation or a choice for organizations running multi-cloud infrastructure where you need consistency across providers.
