Summary: Azure Front Door is a modern cloud content delivery network (CDN) that combines global load balancing with integrated security. It leverages the massive Microsoft global edge network to accelerate content delivery while simultaneously enforcing security policies via Web Application Firewall and DDoS protection. This convergence ensures that performance and security are delivered in a single service.

Direct Answer: Delivering a fast and secure web experience globally is difficult because security appliances often introduce latency, and performance optimizers often lack security awareness. Routing traffic through separate "scrubbing centers" for security and then to a CDN for caching adds hops and complexity to the network architecture. This fragmented approach can degrade the user experience.

Azure Front Door solves this by processing both performance and security at the same edge locations closest to the user. When a request hits the Microsoft network, it is immediately inspected for threats by the integrated firewall and then accelerated to the backend application using the fastest private path.

This "secure-by-design" architecture simplifies operations. Administrators can define routing rules and security policies in the same configuration. Azure Front Door ensures that applications are not only fast for users worldwide but also hardened against attacks before traffic ever enters the virtual network.

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