Source URL: https://blog.cloudflare.com/egress-policies-by-hostname/
Source: The Cloudflare Blog
Title: Introducing simple and secure egress policies by hostname in Cloudflare’s SASE platform
Feedly Summary: Cloudflare’s SASE platform now offers egress policies by hostname, domain, content category, and application in open beta.
AI Summary and Description: Yes
**Summary:** Cloudflare’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform introduces egress policies, allowing organizations to define how their traffic connects to external services based on hostname, domain, and application. This feature enhances security against improper access and streamlines policy management, enabling finer control over internet traffic and complying with regulatory demands.
**Detailed Description:**
Cloudflare has launched a new feature within its SASE platform to improve the management of egress policies, specifically allowing controls based on hostnames, domains, and applications. This enhancement aims to meet customer demand while addressing engineering challenges related to traffic routing and security.
Key features and insights include:
– **Egress Policies Overview:**
– Egress policies enable organizations to control how their internet traffic exits to external services, particularly useful for maintaining security compliant with regulations.
– For example, organizations can designate a specific IP address for outgoing traffic or control traffic based on user roles.
– **Hostname-Based Egress Policies:**
– Previously, users had to define egress policies using destination IP addresses, which posed challenges due to the variability of those addresses.
– The new feature allows setting policies by hostname, simplifying the process as it eliminates the need to track the IP addresses of external services.
– **Dynamic IP Assignments:**
– Cloudflare uses an approach where it temporarily assigns a synthetic IP address during DNS resolution, enabling the mapping of policies to access control based on hostnames.
– This system greatly reduces the complexity of managing numerous egress policies across various subdomains and applications.
– **Integration with Existing Security Measures:**
– While IP ACLs provide an additional layer of security, Cloudflare emphasizes that these should not be the sole access control mechanism. They advocate for combining egress policies with strong authentication methods like SSO and MFA.
– **Engineering Challenges Overcome:**
– The architecture must evaluate egress policies at the transport layer before making outbound connections. This necessitates coordination between DNS and traffic flows to prevent connectivity issues.
– Solutions included ensuring DNS queries and network traffic are processed by the same Cloudflare server to maintain a consistent state.
– **Future Enhancements:**
– Enhancements are on the horizon, including wider support for more connection methods, developing further hostname-based rulesets, which will leverage the dynamic IP assignment method.
For security and compliance professionals, this advancement not only bolsters security by enforcing strict access controls but also streamlines the management of network traffic policies across diverse applications and user groups.