June 2021 Summaries

Cloudflare has expanded its global network by adding ten new cities across four new countries. The company's computational footprint has doubled since the start of pandemic-related lockdowns, with deployments in Tbilisi (Georgia), San José (Costa Rica), Tunis (Tunisia), Yangon (Myanmar), Nairobi (Kenya), Jashore (Bangladesh), Canberra (Australia), Palermo (Italy), and Salvador and Campinas (Brazil). These additions are aimed at improving the Internet experience for users in these regions, with a focus on reducing latency and increasing performance.

Cloudflare has introduced a new feature that enables teams to provide users with a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) client fully rendered in the browser. This allows users to connect from any browser on any device without needing client software. The VNC experience is delivered using Cloudflare Workers, offering nearly instant start times and built-in Zero Trust controls. In future releases, full auditability of user actions in their VNC and SSH sessions will be supported. Browser-based VNC offers several advantages over traditional deployments, including ease of use, better security updates management, and improved visibility into user activities during a session.

Cloudflare has introduced two new features for its website hosting platform, Pages: rollbacks and an API. Deployment rollbacks allow users to quickly revert their production website to a previous working version with just one click, avoiding downtime due to broken builds. The Pages API enables developers to create automations and better integrate the platform into their workflows. Additionally, Cloudflare has shared examples of how these features can be used in conjunction with its Workers serverless computing service for tasks such as triggering new builds periodically or deleting old deployments after a set timeframe.

Many countries, including Syria and Sudan, restrict or shut down internet access during critical exam hours to prevent cheating. In Sudan, four such shutdowns have occurred so far in June 2021. The outages typically last three hours, starting at 6:00 UTC (8:00 local time) and ending at 9:00 UTC (11:00 local time). These timings align with those announced by the Sudanese Ministry of Education. During these exam times, mobile internet use drops significantly while desktop usage increases. The largest drop in use is for mobile internet access in Sudan, which is typically above 75% of traffic. Live data on future outages can be viewed on the Cloudflare Radar Sudan page.

Cloudflare has announced a new look and capabilities for its Cloudflare Logs, allowing customers on the Enterprise plan to configure Logpush for Firewall Events and Network Error Logs Reports directly from the dashboard. The update also makes it easier to send logs directly to analytics partners such as Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Splunk, Sumo Logic, and Datadog. Additionally, two new data sets have been introduced: Firewall Events and NEL Reports. Furthermore, Cloudflare now supports any storage destination with an S3-compatible API, including Digital Ocean Spaces, Backblaze B2, Alibaba Cloud OSS, JD Cloud Object Storage Service, Oracle Cloud Object Storage, and Linode Object Storage. The update also provides direct integrations with four analytics platforms: Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Sumo Logic, Splunk, and Datadog.

Cloudflare TV celebrated its first anniversary with a variety of live programming featuring technical deep dives, security expertise, policy discussions, updates on Cloudflare's products, and inspirational content from various employee resource groups. Since launching in June 2020, the platform has featured over 1,000 original episodes and well over one thousand presenters. The feedback from viewers has been positive, with many expressing their appreciation for the unique content and connections it provides within the Cloudflare community. The production team plays a crucial role in ensuring each live session goes smoothly, and upcoming technical details on how they run a TV station 24/7 will be shared soon.

Cloudflare has announced the release of WARP for Linux and the ability to use it with single applications instead of an entire device across all desktop platforms. The company's WireGuard implementation, BoringTun, encrypts traffic from devices and sends it directly to Cloudflare's edge, ensuring no one in between is snooping on users' activities. Since nearly everything users do online starts with a DNS request, choosing the fastest DNS server across all devices accelerates almost everything they do online. The new features aim to provide more control over which traffic gets encrypted and sent through Cloudflare's network.

Cloudflare is expanding the availability of its Waiting Room feature, which helps manage high traffic volumes on web applications by creating an orderly queue during demand surges. The system was initially built for COVID-19 vaccination web applications and is now being made available to customers on Business and Enterprise plans. The main job of the Waiting Room is to protect a customer's application while providing a good user experience, ensuring that the number of users does not exceed limits set by the customer without degrading performance for end-users. The feature works by issuing tickets in the form of encrypted cookies to users and automatically creating an orderly queue during traffic spikes. It is designed to be highly scalable and resilient, using Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects to handle coordination between data centers.

Cloudflare and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD B2C) have partnered to provide an integration specifically for web applications using Azure AD B2C. This partnership allows customers to protect their B2C applications with Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall (WAF) on any custom domain. The integration enhances security by combining the capabilities of both Cloudflare WAF and Azure AD B2C native Identity Protection features, providing a defense-in-depth approach against cyberattacks. Instructions on how to set up the integration are provided on the Azure website. This integration benefits B2C businesses looking for secure customer authentication methods.

Cloudflare has expanded its partnerships with various Layer 2 service providers, enabling customers to securely and privately connect to the company's network from over 1,600 locations worldwide. This expansion includes new partners CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange (OCX) and Infiny by Epsilon joining the CNI Partner Program. The Interconnect Anywhere initiative aims to extend the availability of Cloudflare's network to as many places as possible, allowing customers to connect their fabric of choice to Cloudflare from a growing list of data centers.

Cloudflare has introduced identity-aware, Zero Trust network policies for its "Teams" service. These rules can be applied to connections bound for the public internet or private networks running on Cloudflare. The new feature enhances security by replacing traditional IP address-based rules with identity-based ones. It also helps organizations transition from a castle-and-moat model of network security to Zero Trust networking, which is more suited to today's remote work environments. With this update, users can now build private networks on Cloudflare and enforce Zero Trust policies within them. The service uses Cloudflare's global network of data centers for comprehensive network filtering and logging without slowing down the users.

Every June, Cloudflare celebrates the anniversary of Project Galileo, a program launched in 2014 to protect vulnerable groups on the internet from cyber attacks. The initiative has grown significantly over the past seven years, with more than 1,500 organizations across 111 countries now receiving protection under Project Galileo. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased need for secure remote access, Cloudflare began offering its Access tool under Project Galileo, allowing organizations to secure their internal applications. Additionally, the company started providing Gateway, a DNS filtering service that blocks malicious content, ransomware, and phishing attempts. As part of its commitment to public purpose in digital technologies, Cloudflare continues to adapt and evolve Project Galileo to meet the changing needs of organizations working for the greater good.

Cloudflare has announced the availability of "HTTP Request Header Modification" within its Transform Rules for all plans. This new feature allows administrators to easily set or remove HTTP request headers as traffic flows through Cloudflare, enriching requests with information such as the Cloudflare Bot Management 'Bot Score' before being sent to servers. Previously, this functionality was only available via a Cloudflare Worker. The update makes it easier for users to modify HTTP request headers without writing any code.

Cloudflare has expanded its Gateway service to include network-based policies, allowing administrators to control access to non-HTTP resources on a per-user basis regardless of device or location. This feature addresses two common problems faced by organizations: replacing legacy network firewall appliances and moving to a Zero Trust model for named resources. The new functionality is integrated with Cloudflare's identity provider, enabling administrators to create identity-based network policies. Additionally, the service can be used in conjunction with Magic WAN and Magic Firewall to define rules that apply to traffic between whole sites, data centers, and Internet-bound connections.

Many countries, including Syria, restrict or shut down internet access during critical exam hours to prevent cheating. In June 2021, Syria planned several internet shutdowns during important exam periods. The outages lasted for about four and a half hours each, starting at around 0100 UTC (0400 local time) and ending at 0530 UTC (0830 local time). Live data on the Cloudflare Radar Syria page allowed tracking of these internet traffic patterns.