The knockdown shield protects somewhere around 160 degrees in front of you. As you turn to protect yourself, there is a bit of a delay, so the enemy player is able to hit your side before your knockdown shield moves to protect that area.
As for being hit directly through the knockdown as if it doesn't exist, that's a cheat called soft aimbot, where the player is "missing", but their bullets fly and snap to you.
Normal aimbot hits a player without missing, soft aimbot makes it look like the cheater is missing, but their shots are curving midair to hit you, that's also why we get most of the "shot behind cover" issues. The other part of that is terrible servers that favors the shooter.
However, I have noticed that in some cases you can just poke your gun through the player's knockdown shield and it renders the knockdown shield useless.
So, in short: The shield either didn't protect you due to a delay, bug, or cheats.
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