Cloudflare announces Zero Trust SIM to help organizations secure mobile employee devices

Cloudflare announced the development of the Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM, a solution that secures every packet of data leaving mobile devices.

With the Zero Trust SIM that Cloudflare is developing, organizations will be able to quickly and securely connect employee devices to Cloudflare’s global network, directly integrate devices with Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform, and protect their network and employees no matter where they are working from.

Additionally, Cloudflare will be launching Zero Trust for Mobile Operators, a new wireless carrier partner program that will allow any carrier to seamlessly offer their own subscribers comprehensive mobile security tools by tapping into Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform.

“When I speak to CISOs I hear, again and again, that effectively securing mobile devices at scale is one of their biggest headaches; it’s the flaw in everyone’s Zero Trust deployment,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Effectively securing mobile devices is hard, and we have been working on this problem since we launched our WARP mobile app in 2019, now we plan on going even further. With Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM we will offer the only complete solution to secure all of a device’s traffic, helping our customers plug this hole in their Zero Trust security posture.”

As organizations have become more distributed with remote working and employees bring their own device (BYOD) to work, ensuring every device employees use is secure is harder than ever. To help with this problem, most organizations use a secure agent, or application, running on an employee’s device to help secure it. However, while applications and endpoint agents are an important part of the security stack, they can’t secure all traffic across every device, and can be challenging to deploy at scale. To help fill this gap Cloudflare is developing the Zero Trust SIM, the industry’s first zero trust solution to secure mobile employee devices at the SIM level, protecting every packet of data.

Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM will integrate seamlessly with Cloudflare’s entire Zero Trust stack, allowing security policies to be enforced for all traffic leaving the device. Further, with the Zero Trust SIM taking an eSIM (embedded SIM) first approach, SIMs can be automatically deployed to both iOS and Android devices and locked to a specific device, mitigating the risk of SIM-swapping attacks faced by existing solutions and saving security teams time. With the Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM businesses will be able to:

• Secure every packet leaving employee devices: Software agents are imperfect and may not be able to handle every type of traffic. Because every data packet leaving a device goes over the SIM, Cloudflare Zero Trust SIM will be able to help secure all of an organization’s data.
• Deploy at enterprise scale in minutes: Building on modern eSIM technology means that the Zero Trust SIM will be able to be automatically deployed and enabled using existing MDM (Mobile Device Management) solutions across all devices within an organization, allowing them to seamlessly roll out Cloudflare’s Zero Trust SIM without the pain of shipping physical SIM cards.
• Integrate seamlessly with Cloudflare WARP: The Zero Trust SIM will be able to be used standalone or deployed with WARP, Cloudflare’s mobile agent, to enable device posture controls and HTTPS inspection for organizations with more demanding needs.
• Secure the Internet of Things: As more and more objects connect to the Internet, from vehicles to payment terminals and shipping containers to vending machines, these devices need to be secured as well. Cloudflare is currently developing new tools, based on the Zero Trust SIM, to provide industry leading connectivity and Zero Trust security for the Internet of Things.

Cloudflare also announced the Zero Trust for Mobile Operators program as part of Cloudflare’s efforts to help enterprises secure mobile devices. The wireless carrier partner program aims to jointly solve the biggest security and performance challenges of mobile connectivity. By combining Cloudflare’s award-winning security tools with the largest mobile networks in the world, businesses can be confident that their devices and data are secure without worrying about performance being impacted.