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How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

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Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#62
post #61

Dumb question - is the 4th article in the series only available via ;login;[1]? The other articles in the series have PDF links, but not the latest one. I'm assuming it will eventually... [1] https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2017/peck

I think that was my mistake, the PDF is in the pipeline, expect it live within a week.

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#63

Great to see them continue this series, and glad that this one touches on what it takes for other companies to achieve something similar. I talk about BeyondCorp a lot as evidence that the Zero Trust model works, and that employees will love it. The most common feedback I get is that it seems like too much of a stretch for companies that don’t operate at Google scale. That may be true if looking at the system as a wh…

off topic: do bastion servers in scaleFTs architecture provide any interactive-session auditing capability (e.g. gravitational teleport), or do they simply act as a bastion access tunneling tier?

If you have interactive session audting.....you will be hearing from me.

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#64
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Google doesn't allow remote work?

I think the only restriction is working on Google approved hardware so no BYOD there. (Disclosure: not a Google employee).

Bring Your Own Device is fine for ChromeOS and Mobile. You might not get the full amount of trust as a Google-issued device (for mobile/tablet).

To achieve the highest levels of access in the BeyondCorp model you need a machine with Google's management agents, so we can evaluate device state accurately and pull information from our inventory management system.

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#66
post #41

I work for Duo Security, which this year launched the first major commercial implementation of BeyondCorp as a part of our product offering. Using it to jump on to the wiki, for diff reviews, and other internal resources has been excellent. In addition to simple primary and second factor, you can design policies for MDM-controlled devices only (i.e. designing endpoints that are trusted for remote access), geolocation…

I've gotten to integrate duo security in a few clients sites and I think you guys are fantastic.

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#67
post #8
post #4

My ex-manager who left Google to another well established company once said the most missed thing from Google was the ability to work remotely right away on corp laptop with BeyondCorp. Disclaimer I work for Google not related to BeyondCorp.

I thought Google doesn't allow remote work?

For a big company, Google is surprisingly willing to make the right thing happen in individual cases. My sense is that Google's ban on working from home is a strong default, a rebuttable presumption that working from home would be a bad idea in a given situation. Rebuttable presumptions can be rebutted.

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#68
post #7

Yesterday, I saw an article[1] about Amazon's plans to block websites in their stores (a very bad thing) and was wondering when a company like Google was going to launch a VPN service. I wonder if these things will meet in the long term. If companies that control the network try to limit access to information about their competitors, then their competitors might try to liberate that information. [1] http://gizmodo.co…

Google has a VPN service fyi. When you connect to a non secure network there's an option to proxy all traffic through a free Google VPN.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/09/14/wifi-assistant-can-s...

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#69

How is this different or more secure than let's say TLS client authentication with the private key on a smart card / Yubikey?

They also take into account the state of the machine you're working on. So locked bootloader and probably a client cert in TPM-like component, plus "device health". Client certs alone are good for authentication (don't work in HTTP/2 though) but they want to reach even better target - no malicious software running on your computer. That's from reading old papers, I don't know if anything changed now.

That's correct. Previous papers touch on the inventory data pipeline and machine health, though without as much detail as I might like in your shoes. Our agents track a wide variety of things on client machines, and we use that inventory data to determine how trustworthy a machine could be. [I work at Google, and helped make these papers, and blog post, happen]

Re: How to use BeyondCorp to ditch VPN, improve security and go to the cloud

#70

Is there a link to the actual (fourth) paper? I only see the abstract.

Working on that now, I think I messed up on my end with our internal tool, hope to have the full PDF download from research.google.com in a day or two, maybe next week if I epic failed. [I work at Google, and helped make these papers, and blog post, happen]
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