Google App Engine (GAE), a managed platform within the broader Google Cloud suite of services that compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, is a web framework and platform for developing and scaling apps hosted on Google’s cloud.
Whether during testing or for other reasons entirely, developers may wish to open up new apps to just a few specific groups of users or perhaps prevent certain regions from accessing them. It is already possible to restrict access based on IP address, but this requires implementing access controls within the code, and even then the requests are still allowed in the door, which not only consumes resources but can also cost companies money for traffic they don’t need or want.
With the new Google App Engine firewall, launching today in beta, developers provide a set of rules through the App Engine Admin API, Google Cloud Console, or gcloud command-line tool and specify the IP addresses to block or allow.
