What security advantages does Cloudflare Tunnel offer when exposing a local XAMPP instance compared to direct port forwarding?

Cloudflare Tunnel offers significant security advantages by creating an outbound-only connection, eliminating the need to open any inbound firewall ports, which vastly reduces your attack surface. All traffic is proxied through Cloudflare's network, providing benefits like DDoS protection, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), and automatic SSL/TLS encryption. It also hides your origin IP address, preventing direct attacks on your home network, and enables a Zero Trust security model through Cloudflare Access for controlled access.