Now Available — Access Visibility With CloudConnexa®

OpenVPN Cloud is now CloudConnexa® — learn more here.

As leaders in virtualized networking, we at OpenVPN understand that you value transparency, traceability, and accountability in your network security solution. That’s why we’ve recently enhanced CloudConnexa with Access Visibility, a new feature that provides granular insights about traffic flows through a wide-area private cloud (WPC) from Users, Hosts, and Networks to any destination. 

This feature is currently available in beta to all CloudConnexa customers. 

What is Access Visibility?

Have you ever asked questions like

• Which private applications are users accessing and when? 
• How can I discover internal private applications that users are trying to access? 
• Which private apps don’t yet have access policies in place?
• Are the access policies working as intended? 

These questions are of vital importance to the implementation of an effective zero-trust framework. CloudConnexa now answers three common questions about traffic flows transmitted through the WPC: Who (a traffic source) tried to access What (a traffic destination) and When?

The Access Visibility feature gives administrators transparency and traceability of traffic flows through a WPC by providing insights into who accessed what resource and when, as well as whether the traffic was allowed or blocked due to access groups configuration. Plus, it’s easy to filter and drill-down into the data to find the answers you need. 

Access Visibility provides the administrators statistics on access events for every source-destination pair to which traffic is sent or blocked. With this information, you can:

• Identify any incidents that need to be investigated.
• Determine whether a suspicion of harmful activities from a particular user is a legitimate one.
• Ensure that access groups are appropriately configured for optimum security.

When Access Control allows or blocks a new traffic flow, it generates an Access Event. 

A traffic flow is defined as an association created between the data traffic source and the data traffic destination that is identified by the following unique attributes: 

1. Source and destination IP address. 
2. Destination port.
3. Protocol field.

Access Visibility uses Sources and Destinations data to generate tallies of all traffic flows that were allowed or blocked due to access controls over the last 24-hour or 7-day period.

Recommended Reading: Now Available in Beta — CloudConnexa® App Sharing Feature

Why does Access Visibility matter?

Prior to the Beta release of Access Visibility, administrators could track who connected or disconnected from a WPC (and when), as well as the reason why the connection was closed. 

Access Visibility extends the information administrators have access to about traffic flows through the WPC and provides several important benefits. Now you can clearly understand exactly what happens within a WPC, investigate security incidents in a timely manner, find the logs of who transmitted traffic through the WPC, and more.

Access Visibility allows administrators to:

1. Obtain traffic flow-level visibility of all traffic flowing through the WPC.
2. Check that the Access Groups and per-app firewalls are being enforced.
3. Discover internal services based on the detailed traffic flow information — and define services to get more service-oriented access visibility.
4. Identify which Users, Networks, and Hosts are accessing the internet via Internet Gateways.
5. Determine whether access denials were legitimate or triggered by malicious intent.
6. Troubleshoot any unexpected traffic routing issues.

If having full transparency of what’s happening in your WPC is a priority for you, Access Visibility provides exactly what you need.

How do I get started with Access Visibility?

To start using the Access Visibility feature, simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Access → Visibility page.
2. Choose the time period for which you want to see the data. (Note: The default period is 24 hours.)
3. Select the destinations of interest using the Destination filters to see the list of sources that accessed or tried to access these destinations.
4. Examine the Sources list. Sources with the most blocked events are shown first. If needed, narrow down the list using the Source filters.
5. Select the Source from which you’d like to view access events.
6. Examine which Destinations the selected Source tried to access (or successfully accessed).
7. Select the Destination of interest, and drill down to the Source-Destination table to explore the granular information of the access events from the Selected Source to the Selected Destination.
8. Explore the data chart, and check when these events happened.

For a detailed overview, check out this page from our knowledge base: Access Visibility.

We’ve also put together this video to help you make the most of Access Visibility:

If you have additional questions about using Access Visibility to find the answers you need for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team. We’re happy to help!

For the latest updates on CloudConnexa, check out our release notes here.

Get started with our network visibility solution today

OpenVPN® is the market-proven leader in secure virtualized networking. Our cloud-based platform enables organizations to maintain secure communication between their distributed workforce, IoT/IIoT devices, and the online services they rely on daily. Built on the market-proven OpenVPN protocol, the solution combines advanced network security, encrypted remote access, and content filtering into a virtualized secure network that provides the best of VPN and ZTNA security.

With over 60 million downloads of our core open-source software and over 20,000 commercial customers, OpenVPN is recognized as a global leader in secure networking.

Ready to take your business to the next level with CloudConnexa? Work from anywhere and from any device with confidence.