Running a secure enterprise network in today’s digital landscape presents unprecedented challenges. The traditional castle-and-moat approach to network security is becoming increasingly ineffective as workforces become more distributed and applications migrate to the cloud. Employees are working remotely from all corners of the globe, applications are hosted across various environments – from on-premise data centers to public clouds and SaaS platforms – and sophisticated cyber attackers are constantly seeking vulnerabilities to exploit.
In the past, enterprises built networks with rigid perimeters, like castles protected by moats. These fortifications were designed to keep threats out and sensitive data in. Employees accessed the network through defined entry points, and the assumption was that internal network traffic was inherently trustworthy. This “network perimeter” security model provided a sense of control within a relatively secure and predictable environment.
However, the rise of the internet, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and cloud computing has fundamentally disrupted this model. A significant portion of modern enterprise workloads now reside outside the traditional network perimeter, rendering the castle-and-moat strategy increasingly obsolete. Yet, many organizations continue to invest in complex and often ineffective perimeter-centric security measures.
This is where Cloudflare One™ emerges as a transformative solution. Cloudflare One represents a new vision for enterprise security and networking, designed to address the evolving demands of the modern, distributed enterprise.
Cloudflare One is a comprehensive platform that seamlessly integrates networking capabilities – empowering employees to work efficiently from anywhere – with consistent, globally deployed security controls. It shifts the focus from perimeter-based security to a more dynamic and adaptable approach that secures data and applications wherever they reside and wherever users access them from.
Starting today, organizations can move away from inefficient traffic backhauling to centralized security appliances by adopting Cloudflare WARP and Gateway to intelligently filter outbound internet traffic. For traditional office networks, Cloudflare is extending its next-generation firewall capabilities to Magic Transit with Magic Firewall, offering a compelling alternative to costly and complex hardware firewall appliances.
With Cloudflare’s extensive global network acting as multiple on-ramps to the internet, and by eliminating the need for backhauling traffic through central chokepoints, Cloudflare aims to simplify and reduce the cost of network routing compared to legacy solutions like MPLS and SD-WAN models. Cloudflare Magic WAN provides a centralized control plane to manage and optimize traffic routing across the Cloudflare network.
Cloudflare One also addresses the limitations of traditional VPNs for access control. Cloudflare Access implements Zero Trust principles to replace outdated private network security models, ensuring secure access to applications without the inherent trust associated with network location. Furthermore, Cloudflare is expanding Access to encompass all applications, including SaaS solutions, and previewing browser isolation technology to protect endpoints from browser-borne malware threats.
Finally, Cloudflare One prioritizes visibility and actionable insights, providing security teams with comprehensive logs and tools to understand and effectively remediate security issues. The launch of Gateway includes enhanced logging capabilities for outbound traffic, and future enhancements will incorporate an advanced Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to proactively identify and block intrusion attempts.
Many components of Cloudflare One are available today, with new features being rolled out progressively. This comprehensive suite of solutions represents Cloudflare’s vision for the future of corporate networking and security.
The Evolving Challenges in Enterprise Networking and Security
The demands placed on corporate networks have undergone a dramatic transformation. IT has evolved from a supporting function to a mission-critical enabler of business operations. Concurrently, workforces have become increasingly dispersed, transitioning from centralized offices to remote work environments. Applications have migrated away from traditional data centers, now residing in multi-cloud environments or being delivered directly over the internet by SaaS providers.
From Direct Network Paths to Inefficient Hairpin Turns
Previously, employees within a physical office could connect directly to applications hosted in a nearby data center via a private network. Remote employees could utilize VPNs to gain access to the internal network. Branch offices were integrated into the same network infrastructure using expensive MPLS links.
However, as applications moved to the cloud and employees became remote, organizations attempted to force this distributed reality back into the outdated castle-and-moat paradigm. Companies invested in more VPN licenses and implemented complex SD-WAN deployments as replacements for MPLS, resulting in increasingly complex networks designed to mimic an obsolete networking model, even as the internet became the de facto corporate network.
Alt: Cloudflare One network architecture diagram illustrating secure and flexible data flow for modern enterprises.
The Fragmentation of Defense-in-Depth
Cyber attackers now possess a wide array of sophisticated tools and techniques to compromise corporate networks. These threats can range from highly targeted malware attacks to large-scale volumetric assaults, and everything in between. Traditionally, defense against each type of attack relied on separate, specialized hardware appliances deployed within the data center.
Maintaining security controls was relatively straightforward when users and applications were co-located. However, with the decentralization of workforces and workloads, these traditional security controls struggled to adapt. Organizations resorted to deploying a patchwork of disparate point solutions in an attempt to replicate their on-premise firewall architectures across hybrid and dynamic environments, leading to management complexity and security gaps.
The High Effort and Low Visibility Paradox
This fragmented approach to security not only compromised defense-in-depth but also significantly reduced network visibility. Organizations struggled to gain a holistic understanding of network and application activity. Customers frequently cite the capture and standardization of security logs as a major challenge. They invested in expensive data ingestion, analysis, storage, and analytics tools, yet still lacked a unified view of their security posture.
Enterprises are now burdened with multiple point solutions, and the aggregation and normalization of logs from these disparate systems has become a significant hurdle. Increasing regulatory compliance requirements further emphasize the need for robust data retention and analysis capabilities. Splintered security solutions have transformed into a data management nightmare.
Remediation Based on Guesswork
The lack of comprehensive visibility into this new networking model forced security teams to operate with limited information, often relying on guesswork to anticipate potential threats and vulnerabilities. Organizations attempting to adopt an “assume breach” security posture struggled to even define the potential scope and nature of a breach, leading to a reactive approach of deploying every possible security solution, regardless of actual need.
Enterprises are often found purchasing new scanning and filtering services, often delivered as virtual appliances, to address perceived threats without a clear understanding of the actual risks. Security teams are forced to manually remediate a wide range of potential events due to a lack of visibility, rather than focusing on targeted responses and proactive security model adjustments.
How Cloudflare One Provides a Unified Solution
Over several years, Cloudflare has been developing the individual components that now constitute Cloudflare One. Initially, individual products were launched to address specific networking and security challenges. Cloudflare One represents the culmination of this effort, providing a unified vision for how these components work together to create a comprehensive solution.
Flexible and Adaptable Data Planes
Cloudflare began as a reverse proxy, enabling customers to protect and accelerate their internet-facing web properties. Over time, Cloudflare has expanded its network capabilities to process various types of traffic in both “reverse” and “forward” directions.
In 2019, Cloudflare introduced Cloudflare WARP – a mobile application designed to secure internet traffic with encrypted connections to the Cloudflare network, while also enhancing speed and reliability. This technology is now available in an enterprise version, launching as part of Cloudflare One, to connect remote employees to Cloudflare Gateway.
Data centers and offices can also benefit from Cloudflare’s network advantages. Magic Transit was launched to protect networks from IP-layer attacks. Initially focused on providing best-in-class DDoS mitigation for on-premise networks, Magic Transit has evolved into a platform for higher-level security functions applied to traffic flowing across the Cloudflare network. Its robust DDoS protection eliminates a significant operational burden without compromising network performance.
Earlier this year, Cloudflare Network Interconnect (CNI) extended this model, enabling customers to directly connect branch offices and data centers to the Cloudflare network. As part of Cloudflare One, outbound traffic filtering is applied to these connections, enhancing security across the entire enterprise network.
Cloudflare One is designed not just to facilitate the internet as the corporate network, but to make it faster and more efficient. Cloudflare’s carrier-agnostic, highly interconnected, and globally peered network delivers consistent services worldwide. Each of these network entry points incorporates intelligent routing based on Argo Smart Routing technology, proven to reduce latency by 30% or more in real-world scenarios. This integrated approach combines security and performance, recognizing their synergistic relationship.
A Single, Unified Control Plane for Network and Security Management
When users connect to the internet from branch offices or remote devices, they bypass the traditional firewall appliances located at headquarters. To maintain security in this decentralized environment, enterprises require a way to secure traffic that no longer resides solely within their physical network perimeter. Cloudflare One addresses this by applying consistent security controls to all traffic, regardless of connection origin or network layer.
Cloudflare Access introduces identity-based security within the Cloudflare network. Organizations can implement granular access controls based on user identity and context for both inbound and outbound connections. Every login, request, and response is proxied through Cloudflare’s network, irrespective of server or user location. The scale and global distribution of the Cloudflare network enable efficient filtering and logging of enterprise traffic without impacting performance.
Cloudflare Gateway ensures secure internet access. Gateway inspects traffic originating from devices and networks for threats and data loss events at the application layer. Expanding its capabilities, Gateway will soon extend this control down to the transport layer.
Organizations also need granular control over network traffic routing. Magic Firewall provides a next-generation firewall for all traffic leaving offices and data centers. Gateway and Magic Firewall allow administrators to define security rules once and apply them consistently across the entire network, or customize rules for specific use cases, all within a unified control plane.
Recognizing that some attacks may evade traditional filters, Cloudflare Browser offers isolated browser technology, providing a secure browsing environment shielded from web-based threats. Customers will soon be able to join a beta program to browse the internet through Cloudflare’s edge network, eliminating the risk of browser-borne malware infecting endpoints.
Furthermore, managing the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that underpins network security should be simplified. Customers have identified certificate management as a core challenge in adopting modern security models. Cloudflare embraces modern encryption standards like TLS 1.3 and simplifies certificate management. Cloudflare has already streamlined website encryption with one-click SSL/TLS, and is extending this ease-of-management to the network functions within Cloudflare One.
Cloudflare global network map
Alt: Cloudflare global network map showcasing extensive datacenter locations worldwide for enhanced performance and security.
Centralized Logging and Security Analytics
Cloudflare’s network processes an average of 18 million HTTP requests per second. Cloudflare has developed robust logging pipelines that enable even the largest internet properties to capture and analyze logs at scale. Cloudflare One leverages this same infrastructure.
Cloudflare Access and Gateway capture every inbound and outbound request without requiring server-side code modifications or complex client-side configurations. Organizations can export these logs to their preferred SIEM provider using the Cloudflare Logpush service – the same high-throughput pipeline used for exporting HTTP request events for public websites. Magic Transit extends this logging capability to entire networks and offices, ensuring complete visibility across all locations.
Beyond basic event logging, Cloudflare Web Analytics transforms raw logs into actionable insights for websites. Cloudflare plans to expand this visibility to encompass network operations as well. Just as Cloudflare has replaced disparate network appliances with a unified and adaptable edge platform, it aims to consolidate the fragmented and complex security analytics ecosystem. Further advancements in this area are anticipated soon.
Intelligent and Accelerated Remediation
Data and analytics should not only provide visibility but also facilitate efficient remediation. Log systems that enable one-click fixes are valuable, but the ultimate goal is automated remediation.
Cloudflare Intrusion Detection System (IDS), launching in closed preview, will proactively monitor networks for anomalous activity and recommend remediation actions, or even automatically take action to resolve issues. Cloudflare plans to extend this proactive scanning and remediation approach to Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Gateway.
Leveraging Cloudflare’s Globally Scaled Network
Over 25 million internet properties rely on Cloudflare’s network to reach their global audiences. More than 10% of all websites, including 16% of the Fortune 1000, connect through Cloudflare’s reverse proxy. Cloudflare accelerates internet traffic by delivering services from its globally distributed data centers.
Cloudflare One is delivered from this same global network infrastructure. Crucially, every Cloudflare data center provides the complete suite of services, including Cloudflare Access, WARP, Magic Transit, and the WAF. For example, when employees connect through Cloudflare WARP to a Cloudflare data center, they may never need to leave the Cloudflare network or data center to access the resources they need. This significantly enhances internet performance, regardless of user location.
This performance advantage is expected to become even more pronounced as browsing shifts to Cloudflare’s edge with Cloudflare Browser. Isolated browsers running in Cloudflare’s data centers can request content that is physically located extremely close by. Furthermore, as more web properties adopt Cloudflare Workers to power their applications, entire workflows can remain within a data center, within milliseconds of users.
What’s Next for Cloudflare One?
While many Cloudflare One features are available today, Cloudflare is launching several new features as part of Cloudflare’s Zero Trust week. Expect daily announcements throughout the week, introducing new additions to the Cloudflare One feature set and further expanding its capabilities.
