Dogfooding from Home: How Cloudflare Built our Cloud VPN Replacement
Rewind to 2015. Back then, as with many other companies, all of Cloudflare’s internally-hosted applications were reached via a hardware-based VPN.
Using Cloudflare to secure your cardholder data environment
As part of our ongoing compliance efforts Cloudflare’s PCI scope is reviewed quarterly and after any significant changes to ensure all in-scope systems are operating in accordance with the PCI DSS.
Migrating to React land: Gatsby
As our developer documentation grows so does the need for tooling. Let’s walk through how we migrated our documentation site to Gatsby to take full advantage of static generation and React.
Speeding up Linux disk encryption
Encrypting data at rest is vital for Cloudflare with more than 200 data centres across the world. In this post, we will investigate the performance of disk encryption on Linux and explain how we made it at least two times faster for ourselves and our customers!
The Bandwidth Alliance Charges Forward with New Partners - Alibaba, Zenlayer, and Cherry Servers
We started the Bandwidth Alliance in 2018 with a group of like-minded cloud and networking partners. Our common goal was to help our mutual customers reduce or eliminate data transfer charges, sometimes known as "bandwidth” or “egress” fees, between the cloud and the consumer.
Why We Started Putting Unpopular Assets in Memory
Recently, we developed a technology that reduces our hit tail latency and reduces the wear out of SSDs. This technology is a memory-SSD hybrid storage system that puts unpopular assets in memory.
Deploying security.txt: how Cloudflare’s security team builds on Workers
Today, we’re launching support for the security.txt initiative through Workers to help give security researchers a common location to learn about how to communicate with our team.
Adding the Fallback Pool to the Load Balancing UI and other significant UI enhancements
The Cloudflare Load Balancer was introduced over three years ago to provide our customers with a powerful, easy to use tool to intelligently route traffic to their origins across the world.
The Serverlist: Workers Secrets, Serverless Supremacy, and more!
Check out our thirteenth edition of The Serverlist below. Get the latest scoop on the serverless space, get your hands dirty with new developer tutorials, engage in conversations with other serverless developers, and find upcoming meetups and conferences to attend.
Remote Work Isn’t Just Video Conferencing: How We Built CloudflareTV
At Cloudflare, we produce all types of video content, ranging from recordings of our Weekly All-hands to product demos. Being able to stream video on demand has two major advantages when compared to live video.
Using Cloudflare Gateway to Stay Productive (and turn off distractions) While Working Remotely
This week, like most of you reading this article, I am working from home. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found it hard to stay focused when the Internet is full of news related to Coronavirus.
Keepalives considered harmful
You’d think keepalives would always be helpful, but turns out reality isn’t always what you expect it to be. It really helps if you read Why does one NGINX worker take all the load? first.
The problem with thread^W event loops
Back when Cloudflare was created, the dominant HTTP server used to power websites was Apache httpd. However, we decided to build our infrastructure using the then relatively new NGINX server.
On the shoulders of giants: recent changes in Internet traffic
As the COVID-19 emergency continues and an increasing number of cities and countries are establishing quarantines or cordons sanitaire, the Internet has become, for many, the primary method to keep in touch with their friends and families.
Announcing Network Analytics
Back in March 2019, we released Firewall Analytics which provides insights into HTTP security events across all of Cloudflare's protection suite; Firewall rule matches, HTTP DDoS Attacks, Site Security Level which harnesses Cloudflare's threat intelligence, and more.
COVID-19 impacts on Internet traffic: Seattle, Northern Italy and South Korea
The last few weeks have seen unprecedented changes in how people live and work around the world. Over time more and more companies have given their employees the right to work from home, restricted business travel and, in some cases, outright sent their entire workforce home.
Cloudflare's COVID-19 FAQs
As the status of COVID-19 continues to impact people and businesses around the world, Cloudflare is committed to providing awareness and transparency to our customers, employees, and partners.
Protect your team with Cloudflare Gateway
Announcing Cloudflare for Teams, a new way to protect organizations and their employees, without sacrificing performance. Cloudflare for Teams centers around Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Gateway.
Cloudflare During the Coronavirus Emergency
We know that organizations and individuals around the world depend on Cloudflare and our network. I wanted to send you a personal note to let you know how Cloudflare is dealing with the Coronavirus emergency.
Open sourcing our Sentry SSO plugin
Cloudflare Access replaces legacy corporate VPNs with Cloudflare’s global network. Using your existing identity provider, Access lets your end users to login from anywhere.
How Replicated Developers Develop Remotely
Replicated is a 5-year old infrastructure software company with a focus on enabling a new model of enterprise software delivery that we call Kubernetes Off-The-Shelf (KOTS) Software.
How to Build a Highly Productive Remote Team (or Team of Contractors) with Cloudflare for Teams
Much of IT has been built on two outdated assumptions. First, employees all sit in the same building or branch offices. Second, that those employees will work full-time at the same company for years.
Cloudflare for Teams Free for Small Businesses During Coronavirus Emergency
Beginning today, we are making our Cloudflare for Teams products free to small businesses around the world. Teams enables remote workers to operate securely and easily. We will continue this policy for at least the next 6 months.
Why the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote in the U.S. is Important to Celebrate on International Women’s Day
Yellow roses were worn by supporters of women's right to vote during the Women's Suffrage Movement in the early 20th century in the United States. The yellow rose became the symbol of victory in the movement and this week, across all of our offices, we celebrate the achievements of women.
How Cloudflare keeps employees productive from any location
Cloudflare employs more than 1,200 people in 13 different offices and maintains a network that operates in 200 cities. To do that, we used to suffer through a traditional corporate VPN that backhauled traffic through a physical VPN appliance.
International Women’s Day 2020: Building a Modern Security Team
When we started at Cloudflare in the summer of 2018, we joined a small security team intent on helping it grow quickly. Cloudflare was already a successful “unicorn” startup and its profile was changing fast, providing cyber security protection for millions of Internet-facing properties.
The History of the URL
January 11th, 1982, 22 computer scientists met to discuss an issue with ‘computer mail’ (now known as email).
Pwned Passwords Padding (ft. Lava Lamps and Workers)
Starting today, we are offering a new security advancement in the Pwned Passwords API - API clients can receive responses padded with random data.
Why I’m Excited to Join Cloudflare as its First CIO
I am delighted to share that I have joined Cloudflare as its first Chief Information Officer to help scale the company in this new phase of its business.
Addressing the Web’s Client-Side Security Challenge
Modern web architecture relies heavily on JavaScript and enabling third-party code to make client-side network requests. These innovations are built on client-heavy frameworks such as Angular, Ember, React, and Backbone that leverage the processing power of the browser
RPKI and the RTR protocol
Today’s Internet requires stronger protection within its core routing system and as we have already said: it's high time to stop BGP route leaks and hijacks by deploying operationally-excellent RPKI!
When Bloom filters don't bloom
Last month finally I had an opportunity to use Bloom filters. I became fascinated with the promise of this data structure, but I quickly realized it had some drawbacks. This blog post is the tale of my brief love affair with Bloom filters.
Why Cloudflare Chose AMD EPYC for Gen X Servers
Looking back at this week's posts on the design, specifications, and performance of Cloudflare’s Gen X servers using AMD CPUs. Every server can run every service. This architectural decision has helped us achieve higher efficiency across the Cloudflare network.
Going Beyond Black History Month
Around this time of year in the United States, African-Americans are often tasked with explaining why we spend 28 (or in the case of leap year 29) days celebrating the contributions our ancestors made to this country.
Securing Memory at EPYC Scale
At Cloudflare, we encrypt data both in transit (on the network) and at rest (on the disk). Both practices address some of the most common vectors used to exfiltrate information and these measures serve to protect sensitive data from attackers but, what about data currently in use?
Gen X Performance Tuning
We have partnered with AMD to get the best performance out of this processor and today, we are highlighting our tuning efforts that led to additional performance across our entire Gen X fleet of servers powered by the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC 7642.
Introducing Secrets and Environment Variables to Cloudflare Workers
Today we’re releasing one of the most requested Workers features: support for secrets and environment variables through the Wrangler CLI and Workers Dashboard.
Impact of Cache Locality
Our Gen X servers process more requests per second per core than our previous fleet. The AMD 2nd Gen EPYC 7642 processor’s large L3 cache minimizes L3 cache misses, and the time-savings add up quickly.
An EPYC trip to Rome: AMD is Cloudflare's 10th-generation Edge server CPU
As we looked at production ready systems to power our Gen X solution, we’re moving on from Gen 9's 48-core setup of dual socket Intel Xeon Platinum 6162's to a 48-core single socket AMD EPYC 7642.
Seamless remote work with Cloudflare for Teams
The novel coronavirus is actively changing how organizations work in real-time. According to Fortune, the virus has led to the “world’s largest work-from-home experiment.” As the epidemic crosses borders, employees are staying home and putting new stress on how companies manage remote work.
Cloudflare’s Gen X: Servers for an Accelerated Future
We designed and built Cloudflare’s network to be able to grow capacity quickly and inexpensively; to allow every server, in every city, to run every service; and to allow us to shift customers and traffic across our network efficiently.
Using your devices as the key to your apps
I keep a very detailed budget. I have for the last 7 years. I manually input every expense into a spreadsheet app and use a combination of sumifs functions to track spending.
Multi-SSO and Cloudflare Access: Adding LinkedIn and GitHub Teams
We are excited to announce two new integrations that make it even easier for organizations to work securely with third parties. Starting today, customers can now add LinkedIn and GitHub Teams as login methods alongside their corporate SSO.
The Serverlist: Globally Distributed Websites, $16M Series A, and more
Check out our twelfth edition of The Serverlist below. Get the latest scoop on the serverless space, get your hands dirty with new developer tutorials, engage in conversations with other serverless developers, and find upcoming meetups and conferences to attend.
Vetflare, Cloudflare's Military Veteran Employee Group Launches
If you’re a veteran reading this, know that Cloudflare has a seat at the table for you.
JAMstack at the Edge: How we built Built with Workers… on Workers
We're showcasing developers building incredible projects with tools like Workers KV or our streaming HTML rewriter.
Announcing Built with Workers
You ask "What can I build with Cloudflare Workers?" @cloudflare responds:
Empowering Your Privacy
Happy Data Privacy Day! At Cloudflare, our mission is to help build a better Internet, and we believe data privacy is core to that mission. But we know words are cheap — even data brokers who sell your personal information will tell you that “privacy is important” to them.
JavaScript Libraries Are Almost Never Updated Once Installed
An analysis, based on CDNJS data, of when and if JavaScript libraries are updated after being installed onto websites.
Announcing the Cloudflare Access App Launch
Since launch, Cloudflare Access has helped improve how users connect to secured applications. When you protect an application with Access, users never have to connect to a private network and never have to deal with a clunky VPN client.
Introducing Cloudflare for Campaigns
Cloudflare for Campaigns is designed to make it easier for all political campaigns and parties to get access to cybersecurity services.
A cost-effective and extensible testbed for transport protocol development
At Cloudflare, we develop protocols at multiple layers of the network stack. In the past, we focused on HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and TLS 1.3. Now, we are working on QUIC and HTTP/3, which are still in IETF draft, but gaining a lot of interest.
Helping mitigate the Citrix NetScaler CVE with Cloudflare Access
Cloudflare Access can help teams build a defense-in-depth mitigation to the Citrix NetScaler CVE for HTTP and SSH requests.
Accelerating UDP packet transmission for QUIC
Significant work has gone into optimizing TCP, UDP hasn't received as much love, putting QUIC at a disadvantage. Let's explore a few tricks that help mitigate this.
Prototyping optimizations with Cloudflare Workers and WebPageTest
Have you ever wanted to quickly test a new performance idea, or see if the latest performance wisdom is beneficial to your site? As web performance appears to be a stochastic process, it is really important to be able to iterate quickly and review the effects of different experiments.
Security on the Internet with Cloudflare for Teams
When Cloudflare launched, businesses bought expensive on-premise hardware to keep their sites online. If they wanted those sites to be faster, or safer, they needed to buy more boxes.
Cloudflare + Remote Browser Isolation
Cloudflare announced today that it has purchased S2 Systems Corporation, a Seattle-area startup that has built an innovative remote browser isolation solution unlike any other currently in the market.
Introducing Cloudflare for Teams
Ten years ago, when Cloudflare was created, the Internet was a place that people visited. People still talked about ‘surfing the web’ and the iPhone was less than two years old, but on July 4, 2009 large scale DDoS attacks were launched against websites in the US and South Korea.
Cloudflare Expanded to 200 Cities in 2019
We have some exciting news to ring in the new decade: Cloudflare’s global network has expanded to 200 cities across 90+ countries.