Tag Archives: SASE

Cloudflare One vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange: who is most feature complete? It’s not who you might expect

Post Syndicated from Ben Munroe original https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one-vs-zscaler-zero-trust-exchange/

Cloudflare One vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange: who is most feature complete? It’s not who you might expect

Cloudflare One vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange: who is most feature complete? It’s not who you might expect

Zscaler has been building out its security offerings for 15 years. Cloudflare is 13 years old, and we have been delivering Zero Trust for the last four. This sounds like we are a late starter — but in this post, we’re going to show that on total Zero Trust, SSE, SASE and beyond, Cloudflare One functionality surpasses that of Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange.

Functional Criteria Group Cloudflare Zscaler
Internet-native network platform 100% (5 of 5) 20% (1 of 5)
Cloud-native service platform 100% (4 of 4) 25% (1 of 4)
Services to adopt SASE 83% (5 of 6) 66% (4 of 6)
Services to extend ZT, SSE, SASE and beyond 66% (8 of 12) 58% (7 of 12)
Network on-ramps 90% (9 of 10) 50% (5 of 10)

This may come as a surprise to many folks. When we’ve shared this with customers, the question we’ve often received is: How? How has Cloudflare been able to build out a competitive offering so quickly?

Having built out the world’s largest programmable Anycast network has certainly been a big advantage. This was the foundation for Cloudflare’s existing application services business — which delivers secure, performant web and application experiences to customers all around the world. It’s given us deep insight into security and performance on the Internet. But not only was our infrastructure ready to address real customer problems at scale, but our serverless compute development platform — Workers — was specifically designed to build globally distributed applications with security, reliability, and performance built in. We’ve been able to build on top of our platform to deliver Zero Trust services at an unmatched velocity — a velocity which we only expect to continue.

But we’ve also had another advantage that this timelines belies. So much has changed in the enterprise security space in the past 15 years. The idea of a performant global network like ours, for example, was not an assumption that could be made back then. When we started building out our Zero Trust offering, we had the benefit of a complete blank slate, and we’ve built out our offering on completely modern cloud assumptions.

But we know the reason you’re here — you want to see the proof. Here it is: we have released a new functional deep dive on our public page comparing Zscaler and Cloudflare’s platforms. Let’s share a sneak peek of two of the five criteria groups – services to adopt SASE and network on-ramps. Many criteria include footnotes in the PDF for added context and clarity (indicated by an *)

Services to adopt SASE Cloudflare Zscaler
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) YES YES
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) YES YES
Secure Web Gateway (SWG) YES YES
Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) YES YES
WAN as a Service with L3-7 traffic acceleration* YES NO
On-premise SD-WAN* NO – partner NO – partner

Network on-ramps Cloudflare Zscaler
Clientless browser-based access YES YES
Device client software YES YES
Application connector software* YES YES
Branch connector software* NO YES
Anycast DNS, GRE, IPsec, QUIC, Wireguard tunnels* YES NO
Private network interconnect for data centers & offices YES NO
Inbound IP transit (BYOIP) YES NO
IPv6-only connection support* YES NO
Recursive DNS resolvers YES YES
Device clients and DNS resolvers freely open to public* YES NO

While the deep dive comparison of 37 functional criteria shows we’re out in front, and our page explains why our architecture is simpler, more trusted, and faster to innovate — we also know there’s more to a product than a list of features. Given that zero trust gets rolled out across an entire organization, the experience of using the product is paramount. Here are three key areas where Cloudflare One surpasses the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange for both end-users and administrators.

1) Every service is built to run in every location at enterprise scale

Claim: Zscaler claims to run the “largest security cloud on the planet” yet Zscaler’s network is broken into at least 8 distinct clouds, according to its own configuration resources: zscalertwo.net, zscalerthree.net, for example. On the front end, from a usability perspective, many clouds don’t make for a seamless administrator experience as each of Zscaler’s key offerings comes with its own portal and login, meaning you interact with each like a separate product rather than with one single “security cloud.”

The Cloudflare One advantage: We are transparent about the size of our massive, global Anycast network and we report on the number of cities, not data centers. The location of our customers matter, and their ability to access every one of our services no matter where they are, matters. The number of cities in which we have data centers is more than 270 (all in the same cloud network) compared to Zscaler’s 55 cities (and remember — not all of these cities are in the same cloud network). Every service (and their updates and new features) on Cloudflare One is built to run on every server in every data center in every city, which is available to every one of our customers. And on the frontend, Cloudflare One provides one dashboard for all Zero Trust — ZTNA, CASB, SWG, RBI, DLP, and much more — solving the swivel chair problem by not spending time manually aligning policies and analytics isolated across separate screens.

2) More throughput for improved end-user experience

It’s no good offering great security if it slows and degrades user experience; seamless, frictionless, and fast access is critical to successful Zero Trust deployments — otherwise you will find your users looking for work arounds before you know it.

Zscaler states that they support “… a maximum bandwidth of 1 Gbps for each GRE [IP] tunnel if its internal IP addresses aren’t behind NAT.”  While most internet applications and connections would hit a 1 Gbps network bottleneck somewhere in their path to the end user, some applications require more bandwidth and have been designed to support it — for example, users expect video streams or large file sharing to be as instant as anything else on the Internet. The assumption that there will be a bottleneck creates an artificial limit on the kinds of throughput that can be achieved, limiting throughput even when link speeds and connectivity can be guaranteed.

The Cloudflare One advantage: We have spent a lot of time testing, and the results are clear: from an end-user perspective, performance on Cloudflare One is exceptional, and exceeds that of Zscaler.  We tested the throughput between two devices that were running a high-bandwidth application. These devices were located in different VPCs within a public cloud’s network, but they could also be on different subnets within an on-premise private network. Each VPC was configured to use Cloudflare’s Anycast IP tunnel as an on-ramp to Cloudflare’s network thereby enabling both devices to connect securely over Cloudflare One. And the throughput results recorded in both directions was 6 Gbps, which is significantly more capacity than the limits placed by Zscaler and others. So, your organization doesn’t need to worry that your new high-bandwidth application will be constrained by the Zero Trust platform you adopted.

3) Better connected to the rest of the Internet

Zscaler claims to be the “fastest onramp to the Internet.” But this is a sleight of hand: an on-ramp is only one part of the equation; your data needs to transit the network, and also exit when it reaches its destination. Without fast, effective connectivity capabilities beyond the on-ramp, Zscaler is just an SSE platform and does not extend to SASE — translating this from initialism to English, Zscaler has not focused on the net working part of the platform.

The Cloudflare One advantage: We have over 10,500 interconnection peers, which is an order of magnitude better. We don’t hand customers off at the edge like Zscaler. You can use Cloudflare’s virtual backbone for transit. The Cloudflare network routes over 3 trillion requests per day — providing Argo Smart Routing with a unique vantage point to detect real-time congestion and route IP packets across the fastest and most reliable network paths.

We started this blog writing about the importance of functionality and so let’s end there. All the peering and proven throughout advantages don’t matter as much without considering the services offered. And, while Zscaler claims to be able to eliminate the need for regional DC hubs by offering services such as SWG and ZTNA, they completely miss out on addressing organizations’ need to protect their cloud applications or on-premise servers end-to-end — including inbound traffic when they’re exposed to the Internet — using Web Application Firewalls, Load Balancing, Authoritative DNS, and DDoS Protection, exactly the space in which Cloudflare had its beginnings and now leads the pack.

In four years, we have surpassed Zscaler in completeness of offering including deployment simplicity, network resiliency and innovation velocity; read the details here for yourself and join us as we look to the next four years and beyond.

What is Cloudflare One?

Post Syndicated from Rustam Lalkaka original https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/

What is Cloudflare One?

Running a secure enterprise network is really difficult. Employees spread all over the world work from home. Applications are run from data centers, hosted in public cloud, and delivered as services. Persistent and motivated attackers exploit any vulnerability.

Enterprises used to build networks that resembled a castle-and-moat. The walls and moat kept attackers out and data in. Team members entered over a drawbridge and tended to stay inside the walls. Trust folks on the inside of the castle to do the right thing, and deploy whatever you need in the relative tranquility of your secure network perimeter.

The Internet, SaaS, and “the cloud” threw a wrench in that plan. Today, more of the workloads in a modern enterprise run outside the castle than inside. So why are enterprises still spending money building more complicated and more ineffective moats?

Today, we’re excited to share Cloudflare One™, our vision to tackle the intractable job of corporate security and networking.

What is Cloudflare One?

Cloudflare One combines networking products that enable employees to do their best work, no matter where they are, with consistent security controls deployed globally.

Starting today, you can begin replacing traffic backhauls to security appliances with Cloudflare WARP and Gateway to filter outbound Internet traffic. For your office networks, we plan to bring next-generation firewall capabilities to Magic Transit with Magic Firewall to let you get rid of your top-of-shelf firewall appliances.

With multiple on-ramps to the Internet through Cloudflare, and the elimination of backhauled traffic, we plan to make it simple and cost-effective to manage that routing compared to MPLS and SD-WAN models. Cloudflare Magic WAN will provide a control plane for how your traffic routes through our network.

You can use Cloudflare One today to replace the other function of your VPN: putting users on a private network for access control. Cloudflare Access delivers Zero Trust controls that can replace private network security models. Later this week, we’ll announce how you can extend Access to any application – including SaaS applications. We’ll also preview our browser isolation technology to keep the endpoints that connect to those applications safe from malware.

Finally, the products in Cloudflare One focus on giving your team the logs and tools to both understand and then remediate issues. As part of our Gateway filtering launch this week we’re including logs that provide visibility into the traffic leaving your organization. We’ll be sharing how those logs get smarter later this week with a new Intrusion Detection System that detects and stops intrusion attempts.

What is Cloudflare One?

Many of those components are available today, some new features are arriving this week, and other pieces will be launching soon. All together, we’re excited to share this vision and for the future of the corporate network.

Problems in enterprise networking and security

The demands placed on a corporate network have changed dramatically. IT has gone from a back-office function to mission critical. In parallel with networks becoming more integral, users spread out from offices to work from home. Applications left the datacenter and are now being run out of multiple clouds or are being delivered by vendors directly over the Internet.

Direct network paths became hairpin turns

Employees sitting inside of an office could connect over a private network to applications running in a datacenter nearby. When team members left the office, they could use a VPN to sneak back onto the network from outside the walls. Branch offices hopped on that same network over expensive MPLS links.

When applications left the data center and users left their offices, organizations responded by trying to force that scattered world into the same castle-and-moat model. Companies purchased more VPN licenses and replaced MPLS links with difficult SD-WAN deployments. Networks became more complex in an attempt to mimic an older model of networking when in reality the Internet had become the new corporate network.

Defense-in-depth splintered

Attackers looking to compromise corporate networks have a multitude of tools at their disposal, and may execute surgical malware strikes, throw a volumetric kitchen sink at your network, or any number of things in between. Traditionally, defense against each class of attack was provided by a separate, specialized piece of hardware running in a datacenter.

Security controls used to be relatively easy when every user and every application sat in the same place. When employees left offices and workloads left data centers, the same security controls struggled to follow. Companies deployed a patchwork of point solutions, attempting to rebuild their topside firewall appliances across hybrid and dynamic environments.

High-visibility required high-effort

The move to a patchwork model sacrificed more than just defense-in-depth — companies lost visibility into what was happening in their networks and applications. We hear from customers that this capture and standardization of logs has become one of their biggest hurdles. They purchased expensive data ingestion, analysis, storage, and analytics tools.

Enterprises now rely on multiple point solutions that one of the biggest hurdles is the capture and standardization of logs. Increasing regulatory and compliance pressures place more emphasis on data retention and analysis. Splintered security solutions become a data management nightmare.

Fixing issues relied on best guesses

Without visibility into this new networking model, security teams had to guess at what could go wrong. Organizations who wanted to adopt an “assume breach” model struggled to determine what kind of breach could even occur, so they threw every possible solution at the problem.

We talk to enterprises who purchase new scanning and filtering services, delivered in virtual appliances, for problems they are unsure they have. These teams attempt to remediate every possible event manually, because they lack visibility, rather than targeting specific events and adapting the security model.

How does Cloudflare One fit?

Over the last several years, we’ve been assembling the components of Cloudflare One. We launched individual products to target some of these problems one-at-a-time. We’re excited to share our vision for how they all fit together in Cloudflare One.

Flexible data planes

Cloudflare launched as a reverse proxy. Customers put their Internet-facing properties on our network and their audience connected to those specific destinations through our network. Cloudflare One represents years of launches that allow our network to process any type of traffic flowing in either the “reverse” or “forward” direction.

In 2019, we launched Cloudflare WARP — a mobile application that kept Internet-bound traffic private with an encrypted connection to our network while also making it faster and more reliable. We’re now packaging that same technology into an enterprise version launching this week to connect roaming employees to Cloudflare Gateway.

Your data centers and offices should have the same advantage. We launched Magic Transit last year to secure your networks from IP-layer attacks. Our initial focus with Magic Transit has been delivering best-in-class DDoS mitigation to on-prem networks. DDoS attacks are a persistent thorn in network operators’ sides, and Magic Transit effectively diffuses their sting without forcing performance compromises. That rock-solid DDoS mitigation is the perfect platform on which to build higher level security functions that apply to the same traffic already flowing across our network.

Earlier this year, we expanded that model when we launched Cloudflare Network Interconnect (CNI) to allow our customers to interconnect branch offices and data centers directly with Cloudflare. As part of Cloudflare One, we’ll apply outbound filtering to that same connection.

Cloudflare One should not just help your team move to the Internet as a corporate network, it should be faster than the Internet. Our network is carrier-agnostic, exceptionally well-connected and peered, and delivers the same set of services globally. In each of these on-ramps, we’re adding smarter routing based on our Argo Smart Routing technology, which has been shown to reduce latency by 30% or more in the real-world. Security + Performance, because they’re better together.

A single, unified control plane

When users connect to the Internet from branch offices and devices, they skip the firewall appliances that used to live in headquarters altogether. To keep pace, enterprises need a way to secure traffic that no longer lives entirely within their own network. Cloudflare One applies standard security controls to all traffic – regardless of how that connection starts or where in the network stack it lives.

Cloudflare Access starts by introducing identity into Cloudflare’s network. Teams apply filters based on identity and context to both inbound and outbound connections. Every login, request, and response proxies through Cloudflare’s network regardless of the location of the server or user. The scale of our network and its distribution can filter and log enterprise traffic without compromising performance.

Cloudflare Gateway keeps connections to the rest of the Internet safe. Gateway inspects traffic leaving devices and networks for threats and data loss events that hide inside of connections at the application layer. Launching soon, Gateway will bring that same level of control lower in the stack to the transport layer.

You should have the same level of control over how your networks send traffic. We’re excited to announce Magic Firewall, a next-generation firewall for all traffic leaving your offices and data centers. With Gateway and Magic Firewall, you can build a rule once and run it everywhere, or tailor rules to specific use cases in a single control plane.

We know some attacks can’t be filtered because they launch before filters can be built to stop them. Cloudflare Browser, our isolated browser technology gives your team a bulletproof pane of glass from threats that can evade known filters. Later this week, we’ll invite customers to sign up to join the beta to browse the Internet on Cloudflare’s edge without the risk of code leaping out of the browser to infect an endpoint.

Finally, the PKI infrastructure that secures your network should be modern and simpler to manage. We heard from customers who described certificate management as one of the core problems of moving to a better model of security. Cloudflare works with, not against, modern encryption standards like TLS 1.3. Cloudflare made it easy to add encryption to your sites on the Internet with one click. We’re going to bring that ease-of-management to the network functions you run on Cloudflare One.

One place to get your logs, one location for all of your security analysis

Cloudflare’s network serves 18 million HTTP requests per second on average. We’ve built logging pipelines that make it possible for some of the largest Internet properties in the world to capture and analyze their logs at scale. Cloudflare One builds on that same capability.

Cloudflare Access and Gateway capture every request, inbound or outbound, without any server-side code changes or advanced client-side configuration. Your team can export those logs to the SIEM provider of your choice with our Cloudflare Logpush service – the same pipeline that exports HTTP request events at scale for public sites. Magic Transit expands that logging capability to entire networks and offices to ensure you never lose visibility from any location.

We’re going beyond just logging events. Available today for your websites, Cloudflare Web Analytics converts logs into insights. We plan to keep expanding that visibility into how your network operates, as well. Just as Cloudflare has replaced the “band-aid boxes” that performed disparate network functions and unified them into a cohesive, adaptable edge, we intend to do the same for the fragmented, hard to use, and expensive security analytics ecosystem. More to come on this soon.Smarter, faster remediation

Data and analytics should surface events that a team can remediate. Log systems that lead to one-click fixes can be powerful tools, but we want to make that remediation automatic.

Launching into a closed preview later this week, Cloudflare Intrusion Detection System (IDS) will proactively scan your network for anomalous events and recommend actions or, better yet, take actions for you to remediate problems. We plan to bring that same proactive scanning and remediation approach to Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Gateway.

Run your network on our globally scaled network

Over 25 million Internet properties rely on Cloudflare’s network to reach their audiences. More than 10% of all websites connect through our reverse proxy, including 16% of the Fortune 1000. Cloudflare accelerates traffic for huge chunks of the Internet by delivering services from datacenters around the world.

We deliver Cloudflare One from those same data centers. And critically, every datacenter we operate delivers the same set of services, whether that is Cloudflare Access, WARP, Magic Transit, or our WAF. As an example, when your employees connect through Cloudflare WARP to one of our data centers, there is a real chance they never have to leave our network or that data center to reach the site or data they need. As a result, their entire Internet experience becomes extraordinarily fast, no matter where they are in the world.

We expect that performance bonus to become even more meaningful as browsing moves to Cloudflare’s edge with Cloudflare Browser. The isolated browsers running in Cloudflare’s data centers can request content that sits just centimeters away. Even further, as more web properties rely on Cloudflare Workers to power their applications, entire workflows can stay inside of a data center within 100 ms of your employees.

What’s next?

While many of these features are available today, we’re going to be launching several new features over the next several days as part of Cloudflare’s Zero Trust week. Stay tuned for announcements each day this week that add new pieces to the Cloudflare One featureset.

What is Cloudflare One?