Cloudflare has announced the acquisition of zero trust startup BastionZero in a move that will bring zero trust infrastructure access controls to the firm’s Cloudflare One platform.
Founded in 2020, BastionZero’s zero trust infrastructure access platform provides zero trust controls to enable users to remotely access infrastructure targets in any cloud or data center while helping organizations simplify and secure their critical business systems.
The firm’s acquisition will see Cloudflare add these controls for infrastructure such as servers, Kubernetes clusters, and databases to its SASE platform.
By expanding its VPN replacement offering to incorporate infrastructure resources, the vendor said security teams will be able to centralize management of more of their hybrid IT environment while also applying zero trust practices to ensure DevOps teams are productive and secure.
In an announcement, Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and CEO, said the move will provide IT teams with access to critical assets remotely through a more secure and flexible alternative to traditional VPN setups.
“The world of work has changed dramatically. Employees have the expectation that they can effectively do their work from anywhere,” he explained.
“There’s no reason why teams managing an organization’s most important systems can’t have the same flexibility. Incorporating BastionZero into Cloudflare One gives IT teams access to an organization's most critical inner workings securely, wherever they are.”
BastionZero acquisition will bolster Cloudflare capabilities
Launched in 2020, Cloudflare One equips organizations with secure access service edge (SASE) and security service edge (SSE) capabilities to ensure the right employees have access to the correct internal systems and data.
The company said the addition of BastionZero will increase its security capabilities by eliminating the risk associated with long-lived passwords and credentials, as well as enhance control through “just-in-time” policy options that ensure individuals have access to information and systems only when they need it.
The freshly bolstered platform will also be better equipped to increase compliance by providing just-in-time permissions for every user trying to access core systems and servers - whether on premises or remotely - while following centralized policy controls with identity-aware logging.
Additionally, BastionZero will remove the need for legacy workaround security patches between systems, Cloudflare said, enabling faster access across complex infrastructure with policy controls and observability.
“Scalable and secure remote access to company servers and other infrastructure is table stakes for every IT and development team,” commented Sharon Goldberg, BastionZero co-founder and CEO.
“But home-grown solutions increasingly create security risks and operational costs. This acquisition enables us to deeply integrate BastionZero’s unique cryptographic approach for simple passwordless infrastructure access into the world’s largest secure access service edge (SASE) network.”
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
