Tag Archives: RBI

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

Post Syndicated from Joao Sousa Botto original https://blog.cloudflare.com/area1-eli-ga/

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

Email is one of the most ubiquitous and also most exploited tools that businesses use every single day. Baiting users into clicking malicious links within an email has been a particularly long-standing tactic for the vast majority of bad actors, from the most sophisticated criminal organizations to the least experienced attackers.

Even though this is a commonly known approach to gain account access or commit fraud, users are still being tricked into clicking malicious links that, in many cases, lead to exploitation. The reason is simple: even the best trained users (and security solutions) cannot always distinguish a good link from a bad link.

On top of that, securing employees’ mailboxes often results in multiple vendors, complex deployments, and a huge drain of resources.

Email Link Isolation turns Cloudflare Area 1 into the most comprehensive email security solution when it comes to protecting against phishing attacks. It rewrites links that could be exploited, keeps users vigilant by alerting them of the uncertainty around the website they’re about to visit, and protects against malware and vulnerabilities through the user-friendly Cloudflare Browser Isolation service. Also, in true Cloudflare fashion,  it’s a one-click deployment.

With more than a couple dozen customers in beta and over one million links protected (so far), we can now clearly see the significant value and potential that this solution can deliver. To extend these benefits to more customers and continue to expand on the multitude of ways we can apply this technology, we’re making Email Link Isolation generally available (GA) starting today.

Email Link Isolation is included with Cloudflare Area 1 enterprise plan at no extra cost, and can be enabled with three clicks:

1. Log in to the Area 1 portal.

2. Go to Settings (the gear icon).

3. On Email Configuration, go to Email Policies > Link Actions.

4. Scroll to Email Link Isolation and enable it.

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

Defense in layers

Applying multiple layers of defense becomes ever more critical as threat actors continuously look for ways to navigate around each security measure and develop more complex attacks. One of the best examples that demonstrates these evolving techniques is a deferred phishing attack, where an embedded URL is benign when the email reaches your email security stack and eventually your users’ inbox, but is later weaponized post-delivery.

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

To combat evolving email-borne threats, such as malicious links, Area 1 continually updates its machine learning (ML) models to account for all potential attack vectors, and leverages post-delivery scans and retractions as additional layers of defense. And now, customers on the Enterprise plan also have access to Email Link Isolation as one last defense – a safety net.

The key to successfully adding layers of security is to use a strong Zero Trust suite, not a disjointed set of products from multiple vendors. Users need to be kept safe without disrupting their productivity – otherwise they’ll start seeing important emails being quarantined or run into a poor experience when accessing websites, and soon enough they’ll be the ones looking for ways around the company’s security measures.

Built to avoid productivity impacts

Email Link Isolation provides an additional layer of security with virtually no disruption to the user experience. It’s smart enough to decide which links are safe, which are malicious, and which are still dubious. Those dubious links are then changed (rewritten to be precise) and Email Link Isolation keeps evaluating them until it reaches a verdict with a high degree of confidence. When a user clicks on one of those rewritten links, Email Link Isolation checks for a verdict (benign or malign) and takes the corresponding action – benign links open in the local browser as if they hadn’t been changed, while malign links are prevented from opening altogether.

Most importantly, when Email Link Isolation is unable to confidently determine a verdict based on all available intelligence, an interstitial page is presented to ask the user to be extra vigilant. The interstitial page calls out that the website is suspicious, and that the user should refrain from entering any personal information and passwords unless they know and fully trust the website. Over the last few months of beta, we’ve seen that over two thirds of users don’t proceed to the website after seeing this interstitial – that’s a good thing!

For the users that still want to navigate to the website after seeing the interstitial page, Email Link Isolation uses Cloudflare Browser Isolation to automatically open the link in an isolated browser running in Cloudflare’s closest data center to the user. This delivers an experience virtually indistinguishable from using the local browser, thanks to our Network Vector Rendering (NVR) technology and Cloudflare’s expansive, low-latency network. By opening the suspicious link in an isolated browser, the user is protected against potential browser attacks (including malware, zero days, and other types of malicious code execution).

In a nutshell, the interstitial page is displayed when Email Link Isolation is uncertain about the website, and provides another layer of awareness and protection against phishing attacks. Then, Cloudflare Browser Isolation is used to protect against malicious code execution when a user decides to still proceed to such a website.

What we’ve seen in the beta

As expected, the percentage of rewritten links that users actually click is quite small (single digit percentage). That’s because the majority of such links are not delivered in messages the users are expecting, and aren’t coming from trusted colleagues or partners of theirs. So, even when a user clicks on such a link, they will often see the interstitial page and decide not to proceed any further. We see that less than half of all clicks lead to the user actually visiting the website (in Browser Isolation, to protect against malicious code that could otherwise be executing behind the scenes).

Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks
Email Link Isolation: your safety net for the latest phishing attacks

You may be wondering why we’re not seeing a larger amount of clicks on these rewritten links. The answer is quite simply that link Email Link Isolation is indeed that last layer of protection against attack vectors that may have evaded other lines of defense. Virtually all the well crafted phishing attacks that try and trick users into clicking malicious links are already being stopped by the Area 1 email security, and such messages don’t reach users’ inboxes.

The balance is very positive. From all the customers using Email Link Isolation beta in production, some Fortune 500, we received no negative feedback on the user experience. That means that we’re meeting one of the most challenging goals – to provide additional security without negatively affecting users and without adding the burden of tuning/administration to the SOC and IT teams.

One interesting thing we uncover is how valuable our customers are finding our click-time inspection of link shorteners. The fact that a shortened URL (e.g. bit.ly) can be modified at any time to point to a different website has been making some of our customers anxious. Email Link Isolation inspects the link at time-of-click, evaluates the actual website that it’s going to open, and proceeds to open locally, block or present the interstitial page as adequate. We’re now working on full link shortener coverage through Email Link Isolation.

All built on Cloudflare

Cloudflare’s intelligence is driving the decisions of what gets rewritten. We have earlier signals than others.

Email Link Isolation has been built on Cloudflare’s unique capabilities in many areas.

First, because Cloudflare sees enough Internet traffic for us to confidently identify new/low confidence and potentially dangerous domains earlier than anyone else – leveraging the Cloudflare intelligence for this early signal is key to the user experience, to not add speed bumps to legitimate websites that are part of our users’ daily routines. Next, we’re using Cloudflare Workers to process this data and serve the interstitial without introducing frustrating delays to the user. And finally, only Cloudflare Browser Isolation can protect against malicious code with a low-latency experience that is invisible to end users and feels like a local browser.

If you’re not yet a Cloudflare Area 1 customer, start your free trial and phishing risk assessment here.

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/one-click-zerotrust-isolation/

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

Most of the CIOs we talk to want to replace dozens of point solutions as they start their own Zero Trust journey. Cloudflare One, our comprehensive Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform can help teams of any size rip out all the legacy appliances and services that tried to keep their data, devices, and applications safe without compromising speed.

We also built those products to work better together. Today, we’re bringing Cloudflare’s best-in-class browser isolation technology to our industry-leading Zero Trust access control product. Your team can now control the data in any application, and what a user can do in the application, with a single click in the Cloudflare dashboard. We’re excited to help you replace your private networks, virtual desktops, and data control boxes with a single, faster solution.

Zero Trust access control is just the first step

Most organizations begin their Zero Trust migration by replacing a virtual private network (VPN). VPN deployments trust too many users by default. In most configurations, any user on a private network can reach any resource on that same network.

The consequences vary. On one end of the spectrum, employees in marketing can accidentally stumble upon payroll amounts for the entire organization. At the other end, attackers who compromise the credentials of a support agent can move through a network to reach trade secrets or customer production data.

Zero Trust access control replaces this model by inverting the security posture. A Zero Trust network trusts no one by default. Every user and each request or connection, must prove they can reach a specific resource. Administrators can build granular rules and monitor comprehensive logs to prevent incidental or malicious access incidents.

Over 10,000 teams have adopted Cloudflare One to replace their own private network with a Zero Trust model. We offer those teams rules that go beyond just identity. Security teams can enforce hard key authentication for specific applications as a second factor. Sensitive production systems can require users to provide the reason they need temporary access while they request permission from a senior manager. We integrate with just about every device posture provider, or you can build your own, to ensure that only corporate devices connect to your systems.

The teams who deploy this solution improve the security of their enterprise overnight while also making their applications faster and more usable for employees in any region. However, once users pass all of those checks we still rely on the application to decide what they can and cannot do.

In some cases, that means Zero Trust access control is not sufficient. An employee planning to leave tomorrow could download customer contact info. A contractor connecting from an unmanaged device can screenshot schematics. As enterprises evolve on their SASE migration, they need to extend Zero Trust control to application usage and data.

Isolate sessions without any client software

Cloudflare’s browser isolation technology gives teams the ability to control usage and data without making the user experience miserable. Legacy approaches to browser isolation relied on one of two methods to secure a user on the public Internet:

  • Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation – unpack the webpage, inspect it, hope you caught the vulnerability, attempt to repack the webpage, deliver it. This model leads to thousands of broken webpages and total misses on zero days and other threats.
  • Pixel pushing – stream a browser running far away to the user, like a video. This model leads to user complaints due to performance and a long tail of input incompatibilities.

Cloudflare’s approach is different. We run headless versions of Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge and other browsers, in our data centers around the world. We send the final rendering of the webpage, the draw commands, to a user’s local device.

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

The user thinks it is just the Internet. Highlighting, right-clicking, videos – they all just work. Users do not need a special browser client. Cloudflare’s technology just works in any browser on mobile or desktop. For security teams, they can guarantee that code never executes on the devices in the field to stop Zero-Day attacks.

We added browser isolation to Cloudflare One to protect against attacks that leap out of a browser from the public Internet. However, controlling the browser also gives us the ability to pass that control along to security and IT departments, so they can focus on another type of risk – data misuse.

As part of this launch, when administrators secure an application with Cloudflare’s Zero Trust access control product, they can click an additional button that will force sessions into our isolated browser.

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

When the user authenticates, Cloudflare Access checks all the Zero Trust rules configured for a given application. When this isolation feature is enabled, Cloudflare will silently open the session in our isolated browser. The user does not need any special software or to be trained on any unique steps. They just navigate to the application and start doing their work. Behind the scenes, the session runs entirely in Cloudflare’s network.

Control usage and data in sessions

By running the session in Cloudflare’s isolated browser, administrators can begin to build rules that replace some goals of legacy virtual desktop solutions. Some enterprises deploy virtual desktop instances (VDIs) to sandbox application usage. Those VDI platforms extended applications to employees and contractors without allowing the application to run on the physical device.

Employees and contractors tend to hate this method. The client software required is clunky and not available on every operating system. The speed slows them down. Administrators also need to invest time in maintaining the desktops and the virtualization software that power them.

We’re excited to help you replace that point solution, too. Once an application is isolated in Cloudflare’s network, you can toggle additional rules that control how users interact with the resource. For example, you can disable potential data loss vectors like file downloads, printing, or copy-pasting. Add watermarks, both visible and invisible, to audit screenshot leaks.

You can extend this control beyond just data loss. Some teams have sensitive applications where you need users to connect without inputting any data, but they do not have the developer time to build a “Read Only” mode. With Cloudflare One, those teams can toggle “Disable keyboard” and allow users to reach the service while blocking any input.

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

The isolated solution also integrates with Cloudflare One’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) suite. With a few additional settings, you can bring comprehensive data control to your applications without any additional engineering work or point solution deployment. If a user strays too far in an application and attempts to download something that contains personal information like social security or credit card numbers, Cloudflare’s network will stop that download while still allowing otherwise approved files.

One-click data security for your internal and SaaS applications

Extend that control to SaaS applications

Most of the customers we hear from need to bring this level of data and usage control to their self-hosted applications. Many of the SaaS tools they rely on have more advanced role-based rules. However, that is not always the case and, even if the rules exist, they are not as comprehensive as needed and require an administrator to manage a dozen different application settings.

To avoid that hassle you can bring Cloudflare One’s one-click isolation feature to your SaaS applications, too. Cloudflare’s access control solution can be configured as an identity proxy that will force all logins to any SaaS application that supports SSO through Cloudflare’s network where additional rules, including isolation, can be applied.

What’s next?

Today’s announcement brings together two of our customers’ favorite solutions – our Cloudflare Access solution and our browser isolation technology. Both products are available to use today. You can start building rules that force isolation or control data usage by following the guides linked here.

Willing to wait for the easy button? Join the beta today for the one-click version that we are rolling out to customer accounts.

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/magic-gateway-browser-isolation/

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

Defending corporate networks from emerging threats is no easy task for security teams who manage complex stacks of firewalls, DNS and HTTP filters, and DLP and sandboxing appliances. Layering new defenses, such as Remote Browser Isolation to mitigate browser-borne threats that target vulnerabilities in unpatched browsers, can be complex for administrators who first have to plan how to integrate a new solution within their existing networks.

Today, we’re making it easier for administrators to integrate Cloudflare Browser Isolation into their existing network from any traffic source such as IPsec and GRE via our WAN-as-a-service, Magic WAN. This new capability enables administrators to connect on-premise networks to Cloudflare and protect Internet activity from browser-borne malware and zero day threats, without installing any endpoint software or nagging users to update their browsers.

Before diving into the technical details, let’s recap how Magic WAN and Browser Isolation fit into network perimeter architecture and a defense-in-depth security strategy.

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

Securing networks at scale with Magic WAN

Companies have historically secured their networks by building a perimeter out of on-premise routers, firewalls, dedicated connectivity and additional appliances for each layer of the security stack. Expanding the security perimeter pushes networks to their limits as centralized solutions become saturated, congested and add latency, and decentralizing adds complexity, operational overhead and cost.

These challenges are further compounded as security teams introduce more sophisticated security measures such as Browser Isolation. Cloudflare eliminates the complexity, fragility and performance limitations of legacy network perimeters by displacing on-premise firewalls with cloud firewalls hosted on our global network. This enables security teams to focus on delivering a layered security approach and successfully deploy Browser Isolation without the latency and scale constraints of legacy approaches.

Securing web browsing activity with Browser Isolation

A far cry from their humble origins as document viewers, web browsers have evolved into extraordinarily complex pieces of software capable of running untrusted code from any connected server on the planet. In 2022 alone, Chromium, the engine that powers more than 70% of all web browsing activity and is used by everyone to access sensitive data in email and internal applications has seen six disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities.

In spite of this persistent and ongoing security risk, the patching of browsers is often left to the end-user who chooses when to hit update (while also restarting their browser and disrupting productivity). Patching browsers typically takes days and users remain exposed to malicious website code until it is complete.

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

To combat this risk Browser Isolation takes a zero trust approach to web browsing and executes all website code in a remote browser. Should malicious code be executed, it occurs remotely from the user in an isolated container. The end-user and their connected network is insulated from the impact of the attack.

Magic WAN + Browser Isolation

Customers who have networks protected by Magic WAN can now enable Browser Isolation through HTTP policies.

Connect your network to Cloudflare and enable Secure Web Gateway

Magic WAN enables connecting any network to Cloudflare over IPsec, GRE, Private Network connectivity. The steps for this process may vary significantly depending on your vendor. See our developer documentation for more information.

Create an isolation policy

Isolation policies function the same with Magic WAN as they do for traffic sourced from devices with our Roaming Client (WARP) installed.

Navigate to the Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard → Gateway → HTTP Policies and create a new HTTP policy with an isolate action.

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

See our developer documentation to learn more about isolation policies.

Enable non-identity on-ramp support

Prior to this release, Magic WAN + Browser Isolation traffic presented a block page. Existing customers will continue to see this block page. To enable Browser Isolation traffic for Magic Gateway navigate to: Cloudflare Zero Trust → Settings → Browser Isolation → Non-identity on-ramp support and select Enable.

Configuration complete

Once configured traffic that matches your isolation criteria is transparently intercepted and served through a remote browser. End-users are automatically connected to a remote browser at the closest Cloudflare data center. This keeps latency to a minimum, ensuring a positive end-user experience while mitigating security threats.

Try Cloudflare Browser

Isolate browser-borne threats on any network with WAN-as-a-Service

Interested in testing our remote browsing experience? Visit this landing page to request demo access to Browser Isolation. This service is hosted on our global network, and you’ll be connected to a real remote browser hosted in a nearby Cloudflare data center.

What’s next?

We’re excited to continue integrating new on-ramps to consistently protect users from web based threats on any device and any network. Stay tuned for updates on deploying Browser Isolation via Proxy PAC files and deploying in-line on top of self-hosted Access applications.

Connect to private network services with Browser Isolation

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/browser-isolation-private-network/

Connect to private network services with Browser Isolation

Connect to private network services with Browser Isolation

If you’re working in an IT organization that has relied on virtual desktops but looking to get rid of them, we have some good news: starting today, you can connect your users to your private network via isolated remote browsers. This means you can deliver sensitive internal web applications — reducing costs without sacrificing security.

Browser Isolation with private network connectivity enables your users to securely access private web services without installing any software or agents on an endpoint device or absorbing the management and cost overhead of serving virtual desktops. What’s even better: Browser Isolation is natively integrated into Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform, making it easy to control and monitor who can access what private services from a remote browser without sacrificing performance or security.

Deprecating virtual desktops for web apps

The presence of virtual desktops in the workplace tells an interesting story about the evolution of deploying and securing enterprise applications. Serving a full virtual desktop to end-users is an expensive decision, each user requiring a dedicated virtual machine with multiple CPU cores and gigabytes of memory to run a full operating system. This cost was offset by the benefits of streamlining desktop app distribution and the security benefits of isolating unmanaged devices from the aging application.

Then the launch of Chromium/V8 surprised everyone by demonstrating that desktop-grade applications could be built entirely in web-based technologies.  Today, a vast majority of applications — either SaaS or private — exist within a web browser. With most Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users connecting to a remote desktop just to open a web browser, VDI’s utility for distributing applications is really no longer needed and has become a tremendously expensive way to securely host a web browser.

Browser Isolation with private network connectivity enables businesses to maintain the security benefits of VDI, without the costs of hosting and operating legacy virtual desktops.

Transparent end-user experience

But it doesn’t just have a better ROI. Browser Isolation also offers a better experience for your end-users, too. Serving web applications via virtual desktops is a clunky experience. Users first need to connect to their virtual desktop (either through a desktop application or web portal), open an embedded web browser. This model requires users to context-switch between local and remote web applications which adds friction, impacting user productivity.

With Browser Isolation users simply navigate to the isolated private application in their preferred web browser and use the service as if they were directly browsing the remote web browser.

How it works

Browser Isolation with private network connectivity works by unifying our Zero Trust products: Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Tunnels.

Cloudflare Access authorizes your users via your preferred Identity Provider and connects them to a remote browser without installing any software on their device. Cloudflare Tunnels securely connects your private network to remote browsers hosted on Cloudflare’s network without opening any inbound ports on your firewall.

Monitor third-party users on private networks

Ever needed to give a contractor or vendor access to your network to remotely manage a web UI? Simply add the user to your Clientless Web Isolation policy, and they can connect to your internal service without installing any client software on their device. All requests to private IPs are filtered, inspected, and logged through Cloudflare Gateway.

Apply data protection controls

All traffic from remote browsers into your network is inspected and filtered. Data protection controls such as disabling clipboard, printing and file upload/downloads can be granularly applied to high-risk user groups and sensitive applications.

Get started

Connect your network to Cloudflare Zero Trust

It’s ridiculously easy to connect any network with outbound Internet access.

Engineers needing a web environment to debug and test services inside a private network just need to run a single command to connect their network to Browser Isolation using Cloudflare Tunnels.

Enable Clientless Web Isolation

Clientless Web Isolation allows users to connect to a remote browser without installing any software on the endpoint device. That means company-wide deployment is seamless and transparent to end users. Follow these steps to enable Clientless Web Isolation and define what users are allowed to connect to a remote browser.

Browse private IP resources

Now that you have your network connected to Cloudflare, and your users connected to remote browsers it’s easy for a user to connect to any RFC 1918 address in a remote browser. Simply navigate to your isolation endpoint, and you’ll be connected to your private network.

For example, if you want a user to manage a router hosted at http://192.0.2.1, prefix this URL with your isolation endpoint such as

https://<authdomain>.cloudflareaccess.com/browser/http://192.0.2.1

That’s it! Users are automatically served a remote browser in a nearby Cloudflare data center.

Remote browser connected to a private web service with data loss prevention policies enabled

Define policies

At this point, your users can connect to any private resource inside your network. You may want to further control what endpoints your users can reach. To do this, navigate to Gateway → Policies → HTTP and allow / block or apply data protection controls for any private resource based on identity or destination IP address. See our developer documentation for more information.

Connect to private network services with Browser Isolation

Additionally, isolation policies can be defined to control how users can interact with the remote browser to disable the clipboard, printing or file upload / downloads. See our developer documentation for more information.

Logging and visibility

Finally, all remote browser traffic is logged by the Secure Web Gateway. Navigate to Logs → Gateway → HTTP and filter by identity or destination IP address.

Connect to private network services with Browser Isolation

What’s next?

We’re excited to learn how people use Browser Isolation to enable remote access to private networks and protect sensitive apps. Like always, we’re just getting started so stay tuned for improvements on configuring remote browsers and deeper connectivity with Access applications. Click here to get started with Browser Isolation.

CVE-2022-1096: How Cloudflare Zero Trust provides protection from zero day browser vulnerabilities

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/cve-2022-1096-zero-trust-protection-from-zero-day-browser-vulnerabilities/

CVE-2022-1096: How Cloudflare Zero Trust provides protection from zero day browser vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-1096: How Cloudflare Zero Trust provides protection from zero day browser vulnerabilities

On Friday, March 25, 2022, Google published an emergency security update for all Chromium-based web browsers to patch a high severity vulnerability (CVE-2022-1096). At the time of writing, the specifics of the vulnerability are restricted until the majority of users have patched their local browsers.

It is important everyone takes a moment to update their local web browser. It’s one quick and easy action everyone can contribute to the cybersecurity posture of their team.

Even if everyone updated their browser straight away, this remains a reactive measure to a threat that existed before the update was available. Let’s explore how Cloudflare takes a proactive approach by mitigating the impact of zero day browser threats with our zero trust and remote browser isolation services. Cloudflare’s remote browser isolation service is built from the ground up to protect against zero day threats, and all remote browsers on our global network have already been patched.

How Cloudflare Zero Trust protects against browser zero day threats

Cloudflare Zero Trust applies a layered defense strategy to protect users from zero day threats while browsing the Internet:

  1. Cloudflare’s roaming client steers Internet traffic over an encrypted tunnel to a nearby Cloudflare data center for inspection and filtration.
  2. Cloudflare’s secure web gateway inspects and filters traffic based on our network intelligence, antivirus scanning and threat feeds. Requests to known malicious services are blocked and high risk or unknown traffic is automatically served by a remote browser.
  3. Cloudflare’s browser isolation service executes all website code in a remote browser to protect unpatched devices from threats inside the unknown website.
CVE-2022-1096: How Cloudflare Zero Trust provides protection from zero day browser vulnerabilities

Protection from the unknown

Zero day threats are often exploited and exist undetected in the real world and actively target users through risky links in emails or other external communication points such as customer support tickets. This risk cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced by using remote browser isolation to minimize the attack surface. Cloudflare’s browser isolation service is built from the ground up to protect against zero day threats:

  • Prevent compromised web pages from affecting the endpoint device by executing all web code in a remote browser that is physically isolated from the endpoint device. The endpoint device only receives a thin HTML5 remoting shell from our network and vector draw commands from the remote browser.
  • Mitigate the impact of compromise by automatically destroying and reconstructing remote browsers back to a known clean state at the end of their browser session.
  • Protect adjacent remote browsers by encrypting all remote browser egress traffic, segmenting remote browsers with virtualization technologies and distributing browsers across physical hardware in our global network.
  • Aiding Security Incident Response (SIRT) teams by logging all remote egress traffic in the integrated secure web gateway logs.

Patching remote browsers around the world

Even with all these security controls in place, patching browsers remains critical to eliminate the risk of compromise. The process of patching local and remote browsers tells two different stories that can be the difference between compromise, and avoiding a zero day vulnerability.

Patching your workforces local browsers requires politely asking users to interrupt their work to update their browser, or apply mobile device management techniques to disrupt their work by forcing an update. Neither of these options create happy users, or deliver rapid mitigation.

Patching remote browsers is a fundamentally different process. Since the remote browser itself is running on our network, Users and Administrators do not need to intervene as security patches are automatically deployed to remote browsers on Cloudflare’s network. Then without a user restarting their local browser, any traffic to an isolated website is automatically served from a patched remote browser.

Finally, browser based vulnerabilities such as CVE-2022-1096 are not uncommon. With over 300 in 2021 and over 40 already in 2022 (according to cvedetails.com) it is critical for administrators to have a plan to rapidly mitigate and patch browsers in their organization.

Get started with Cloudflare Browser Isolation

Cloudflare Browser Isolation is available to both self serve and enterprise customers. Whether you’re a small startup or a massive enterprise, our network is ready to serve fast and secure remote browsing for your team, no matter where they are based.

To get started, visit our website and, if you’re interested in evaluating Browser Isolation, ask our team for a demo with our Clientless Web Isolation.

Clientless Web Isolation is now generally available

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/clientless-web-isolation-general-availability/

Clientless Web Isolation is now generally available

Clientless Web Isolation is now generally available

Today, we’re excited to announce that Clientless Web Isolation is generally available. A new on-ramp for Browser Isolation that natively integrates Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) with the zero-day, phishing and data-loss protection benefits of remote browsing for users on any device browsing any website, internal app or SaaS application. All without needing to install any software or configure any certificates on the endpoint device.

Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation simplifies connections to remote browsers through a hyperlink (e.g.: https://<your-auth-domain>.cloudflareaccess.com/browser). We explored use cases in detail in our beta announcement post, but here’s a quick refresher on the use cases that clientless isolated browsing enables:

Share secure browsing across the entire team on any device

Simply navigating to Clientless Web Isolation will land your user such as an analyst, or researcher in a remote browser, ready to securely conduct their research or investigation without exposing their public IP or device to potentially malicious code on the target website.

Clientless Web Isolation is now generally available

Suspicious hyperlinks and PDF documents from sensitive applications can be opened in a remote browser by rewriting the link with the clientless endpoint. For example:

https://<authdomain>.cloudflareaccess.com/browser/https://www.example.com/suspiciouslink

This is powerful when integrated into a security incident monitoring tool, help desk or any tool where users are clicking unknown or untrusted hyperlinks.

Integrate Browser Isolation with a third-party secure web gateway

Browser Isolation can be integrated with a legacy secure web gateway through the use of a redirecting custom block page. Integrating Browser Isolation with your existing secure web gateway enables safe browsing without the support burden of micromanaging block lists.

See our developer documentation for example block pages.

Securely access sensitive data on BYOD devices endpoints

In an ideal world, users would always access sensitive data from corporate devices. Unfortunately it’s not possible or feasible: contractors, by definition, rely on non-corporate devices. Employees may not be able to take their device home, it is unavailable due to a disaster or travel to high risk areas without their managed machine.

Historically IT departments have worked around this by adopting legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This made sense a decade ago when most business applications were desktop applications. Today this architecture makes little sense when most business applications live in the browser. VDI is a tremendously expensive method to deliver BYOD support and still requires complex network administration to connect with DNS filtering and Secure Web Gateways.

All traffic from Browser Isolation to the Internet or an Access protected application is secured and inspected by the Secure Web Gateway out of the box. It only takes a few clicks to require Gateway device posture checks for users connecting over Clientless Web Isolation.

Get started

Clientless web isolation is available as a capability for all Cloudflare Zero Trust subscribers who have added Browser Isolation to their plan. If you are interested in learning more about use cases see the beta announcement post and our developer documentation.

Introducing Clientless Web Isolation

Post Syndicated from Tim Obezuk original https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-clientless-web-isolation-beta/

Introducing Clientless Web Isolation

Introducing Clientless Web Isolation

Today, we’re excited to announce the beta for Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation. A new on-ramp for Browser Isolation that natively integrates Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) with the zero-day, phishing and data-loss protection benefits of remote browsing for users on any device browsing any website, internal app or SaaS application. All without needing to install any software or configure any certificates on the endpoint device.

Secure access for managed and unmanaged devices

In early 2021, Cloudflare announced the general availability of Browser Isolation, a fast and secure remote browser that natively integrates with Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform. This platform — also known as Cloudflare for Teams — combines secure Internet access with our Secure Web Gateway solution (Gateway) and secure application access with a ZTNA solution (Access).

Typically, admins deploy Browser Isolation by rolling out Cloudflare’s device client on endpoints, so that Cloudflare can serve as a secure DNS and HTTPS Internet proxy. This model protects users and sensitive applications when the administrator manages their team’s devices. And for end users, the experience feels frictionless like a local browser: they are hardly aware that they are actually browsing on a secure machine running in a Cloudflare data center near them.

The end-to-end integration of Browser Isolation with secure Internet access makes it easy for administrators to deploy Browser Isolation across their teams without users being aware they’re actually browsing on a secure machine in a nearby Cloudflare data center. However, managing endpoint clients can add configuration overhead for users on unmanaged devices, or contractors on devices managed by third-party organizations.

Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation streamlines connections to remote browsers through a hyperlink (e.g.: https://<your-auth-domain>.cloudflareaccess.com/browser). Once users are authenticated through any of Cloudflare Access’s supported identity providers, the user’s browser uses HTML5 to establish a low-latency connection to a remote browser hosted in a nearby Cloudflare data center without installing any software. There are no servers to manage and scale, or regions to configure.

The simple act of clicking a link in an email, or website causes your browser to download and execute payloads of active web content which can exploit unknown zero-day threats and compromise an endpoint.

Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation can be initiated through a prefixed URL (e.g., https://<your-auth-domain>.cloudflareaccess.com/browser/https://www.example.com). Simply configuring your custom block page, email gateway, or ticketing tool to prefix high-risk links with Browser Isolation will automatically send high risk clicks to a remote browser, protecting the endpoint from any malicious code that may be present on the target link.

Introducing Clientless Web Isolation

Here at Cloudflare, we use Cloudflare’s products to protect Cloudflare, and in fact, use this clientless web isolation approach for our own security investigation activities. By prefixing high risk links with our auth domain, our security team is able to safely investigate potentially malicious websites and phishing sites.

No risky code ever reaches an employee device, and at the end of their investigation, the remote browser is terminated and reset to a known clean state for their next investigation.

Integrated Zero Trust access and remote browsing

The time when corporate data was only accessed from managed devices, inside controlled networks has long since passed. Enterprises relying on strict device posture controls to verify that application access only occurs from managed devices have had few tools to support contractor or BYOD workforces. Historically, administrators have worked around the issue by deploying costly, resource intensive Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments.

Moreover, when it comes to securing application access, Cloudflare Access excels in applying least-privilege, default-deny policies to web-based applications, without needing to install any client software on user devices.

Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation augments ZTNA use cases, allowing applications protected by Access and Gateway to leverage Browser Isolation’s data protection controls such as local printing control, clipboard and file upload / download restrictions to prevent sensitive data from transferring onto unmanaged devices.

Isolated links can easily be added to the Access app launcher as bookmarks allowing your team and contractors to easily access any site with one click.

Introducing Clientless Web Isolation

Finally, just because a remote browser reduces the impact of a compromise, doesn’t mean it should have unmanaged access to the Internet. All traffic from the remote browser to the target website is secured, inspected and logged by Cloudflare’s SWG solution (Gateway) ensuring that known threats are filtered through HTTP policies and anti-virus scanning.

Join the clientless web isolation beta

Clientless web isolation will be available as a capability to Cloudflare for Teams subscribers who have added Browser Isolation to their plan. We’ll be opening Cloudflare’s clientless web isolation for beta access soon. If you’re interested in participating, sign up here to be the first to hear from us.

We’re excited about the secure browsing and application access use cases for our clientless web isolation model. Now, teams of any size, can deliver seamless Zero Trust connectivity to unmanaged devices anywhere in the world.