Modern Bastion Hosts

Bastion hosts play a crucial role in modern networking by providing secure access to private networks from external networks, even in environments adhering to Zero Trust principles. Modern bastion hosts should ideally use SSH certificates, be centrally managed, cloud platform agnostic, and have robust logging and runtime security features. Transitioning from static credentials to identity-based authentication enhances security, allowing for centralized management of user credentials via identity providers like Okta, which supports Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication. Okta Advanced Server Access (ASA) facilitates SSH certificate management, eliminating the need for static SSH keys and enhancing security through short-lived certificates. Central management ensures that engineers can easily access bastion hosts across various cloud environments, while comprehensive logging and session capture enable auditability and real-time policy enforcement. Additionally, maintaining security involves regular patching, utilizing Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform for scalable management, and adhering to Zero Trust principles. Visualization tools, such as those offered by Sigma Computing, support the creation of dashboards for monitoring security data, making it accessible to a broad range of users.