Cloudflare has launched a wave of platforms and updates to the networking services it provides as part of accelerating the shift toward zero-trust IT environments using a virtual private network (VPN) based on a Wireguard protocol that is optimized for data encryption. The implementation of that VPN by Cloudguard is known as WARP.
Company CEO Matthew Prince said Cloudflare One extends WARP to create a network-as-a-service platform that is managed via the cloud using a common control plane and user interface. It replaces the patchwork of security and wide-area networking (WAN) appliances that today are strewn across the extended enterprise, he said.
As part of a Zero Trust Week initiative, Cloudflare also announced it is integrating that service with multiple third-party providers of identity management services along with partnerships with CrowdStrike, VMware Carbon Black, SentinelOne and Tanium that extend the Cloudflare control plane to platforms and services provided by these vendors.
In addition, the Cloudflare Access service has been extended to add support for third-party SaaS applications, while Cloudflare Gateway has been upgraded to include a Layer 7 firewall and integration with the Cloudflare WARP desktop client and the Cloudflare Teams offering. The company also unveiled Magic Firewall, a network-level firewall for remote users, branch offices, data centers and cloud infrastructure that shifts more of the overhead for processing security functions on to the Cloudflare network.
Cloudflare is also making available a free analytics tool and a beta release of Cloudflare Browser Isolation, which runs browser sessions in sandboxed environments in Cloudflare data centers. Instead of streaming pixels to the user, however, Cloudflare Browser Isolation sends the final output of a web page rendering.
Finally, Cloudflare revealed it has rearchitected Argo Tunnel, which it employs to create secure connections to distinguish between persistent objects such as DNS records and ephemeral objects such as connections by assigning a permanent name to a tunnel.