January 19, 2018

CloudFlare launches ‘Access’ to compete against Google’s Beyond Corp.

The product aims to allow employees to operate outside a corporate network by providing centralized access, removing VPN dependency.

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Web performance and security company CloudFlare have launched ‘Access’ a remote entrance product for employees to carry out operations through a centralized application control for legacy and cloud apps. Through Access, CloudFlare say they will be able to reduce remote entry worries for employees depending on VPN, a clunky and time-consuming solution.

According to CloudFlare, it is about time that employees make-shift to a faster solution that takes care of corporate network access from far-off locations. They further added that a certain kind of ‘democratization’ was required in the space of corporate access without necessarily using VPN, which made the ideation of the ‘Access’ a necessity.

Explaining this, Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare said:

 VPNs are slow, and clunky, and frankly, don’t make sense for an increasingly mobile workforce accessing increasingly cloudified apps. Access gives centralized application access control for legacy or cloud apps without slowing down connections, regardless of where someone is working around the world.

Apart from replacing VPN, CloudFlare say that they have decided to compete against Google’s Beyond Corp. by leveraging Access’ security and authentication. They further added that with CloudFlare’s Access, they differentiate from Beyond Corp. by offering customers a faster and safer option that speeds up the work without having to go back and forth to the server and reducing the susceptibility to phishing and malware attacks.

Emphasizing this point, Prince added:

Access solves that exact same problem but does it in a way that is more robust. It supports cloud environments, it supports remote workers without slowing down their connection, and it actually provides a better security model where you have individuals being logged as they pass through authentication checkpoints to use each different application.