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Cloudflare Has a Plan to Change Everything About Cloud Security
It wants to replace corporate VPNs and firewalls with its own networks. That could make it even more of an internet gatekeeper.
Cloudflare is best known for protecting websites and keeping them online — and for the occasional deplatforming. As one of the world’s leading content delivery networks, or CDNs, it serves as a kind of middleman for some 22 million websites (including this one), speeding their load times while guarding against threats such as denial-of-service attacks. Over the past decade, it has quietly become a linchpin of the global internet, propelling it to a successful IPO last year and a $5 billion valuation. And it’s about to get bigger.
Today, Cloudflare said it will launch Cloudflare for Teams, a set of cloud security products aimed at businesses of all kinds. Whereas Cloudflare’s existing products focus on keeping public-facing websites up and running, Cloudflare for Teams will focus on securing companies’ internal systems and protecting their employees from threats like malware and phishing attacks. If it’s anywhere near as successful as Cloudflare’s existing business, it could move a big chunk of corporate security from hardware boxes to the cloud and make Cloudflare even more integral to the internet.
One of the core products within Teams is Cloudflare Access, a cloud-based enterprise security system that’s meant to replace a corporate VPN. Rather than putting a company’s internal apps and tools on a private network, it puts them on the public internet but uses Cloudflare’s network to restrict access to authorized people and devices, following a model called “zero trust.” Whereas traditional systems route employees’ connections through hardware at company headquarters or a regional hub, which can be slow and buggy, Cloudflare’s system would allow them to connect to the nearest of its nearly 200 data centers around the world. And it would require verification of the employee’s identity and device at every step, rather than giving them full intranet access with one login.
The second core product is Cloudflare Gateway, a sort of cloud-based firewall to filter employees’ internet traffic. Like Cloudflare Access, the goal is to replace…
