Cloudflare, Inc. announced the development of Zero Trust SIM — this is the first solution to secure every packet of data from a mobile device.
The Zero Trust SIM in development at Cloudflare will enable organizations to quickly and securely connect mobile devices to Cloudflare’s global network, directly onboard devices with Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform, and connect the network and protect employees, regardless of where they are working.
Additionally, Cloudflare will also launch Zero Trust for mobile operators, a new mobile carrier partner program that will allow operators to seamlessly offer comprehensive mobile security tools to their subscribers by leveraging the Cloudflare Zero Trust platform.
As organizations become more distributed through remote working and employee bring-your-own-device (BYOD), securing all devices of employees used to become increasingly difficult. To solve this problem, most companies use a secure agent or application running on employees’ devices to help secure them.
However, while applications and endpoint agents are an important part of the security stack, they cannot secure all traffic passing through each device. This system can be difficult to implement at scale. To fill this gap, Cloudflare is now developing Zero Trust SIM, the industry’s first zero trust solution for securing employee mobile devices at the SIM level, protecting every packet of data.
The Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM will seamlessly integrate with Cloudflare’s entire Zero Trust stack, enabling security policy enforcement for all traffic exiting the device. And since Zero Trust SIM gives priority to eSIM (embedded SIM), which reduces the risk of SIM swapping attacks, saving time for security professionals.
With Cloudflare’s Zero Trust SIM, businesses can:
- As software agents are flawed, they may be unable to manage all sorts of traffic. Since all packets of data leaving a device go through the SIM, Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM can help secure all of an organization’s data.
- Building on modern eSIM technology means the Zero Trust SIM can be automatically deployed and activated on all devices within an organization using existing MDM (mobile device management) solutions. This allows Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM to seamlessly roll out without the labour-intensive shipping of physical SIM cards.
- The Zero Trust SIM can be used standalone or deployed with WARP, Cloudflare’s mobile agent, to enable device status checks and HTTPS inspections in more demanding organizations.
- As more and more objects are connected to the internet — from vehicles to payment terminals and shipping containers to vending machines — these things must also be secured. Cloudflare is actively working on new solutions based on the Zero Trust SIM to provide industry-leading connectivity and Zero Trust security for the Internet of Things.
Cloudflare’s approach also makes the setup process easy, as all the employee has to scan a QR to enjoy the benefits of this solution. Nothing more.
This proposal also protects all outgoing or incoming traffic when the device is connected through a mobile network. It makes no difference what app or what type of content is used. But when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi network, it does not intervene.
Cloudflare, however, is not just looking for companies to use their own SIM cards. It also encourages operators to implement this solution in their business products.
Of course, Cloudflare SIM cards do not protect customers from all types of threats. However, it is a strong layer of protection that should help reduce a wide range of attacks.
