Cloudflare Inc. today rolled out a new service designed to make it easier for the world’s growing population of mobile workers to access company systems when they’re away from the office.

Employees at most enterprises currently have to use virtual private network tools for the task, which can be quite cumbersome. The main issue is that loading times are often slow since VPNs route traffic through a specialized server for security purposes. Cloudflare Access, as the newly announced service is called, is positioned as a more convenient alternative.

The offering implements elements from a security model called BeyondCorp that was originally developed by Google LLC to save its employees the hassle of using VPNs. At a high level, the approach involves substituting a virtual private network with several other technologies that can provide the same result, but in a way that doesn’t hurt the user experience.

The first piece of the puzzle is encryption. Cloudflare Access sends all traffic over a secure HTTP connection and gives organizations the option of assigning a digital certificate to each employee device. The certificate acts as a sort of seal, enabling companies to verify cryptographically that an endpoint is authorized to make a connection.

From there, Cloudflare Access can be used to authenticate users with an enterprise’s identity management service of choice. Cloudflare said the offering works with “most” major platforms in the category, including Microsoft Corp.’s Azure Active Directory and Okta.

These integrations provide administrators centralized control over who can access what in the corporate network. A company could, for example, mandate that only certain senior staffers may remotely access an important application. It’s also possible to enforce rules at the group level.

If a user violates their organization’s policies, Cloudflare said, administrators can terminate sessions immediately. Important events are logged automatically in case they may be needed for a future audit.

Cloudflare Access will compete with Duo Beyond, a service from identity management startup Duo Security Inc. that is likewise based on Google’s BeyondCorp model. Cloudflare’s offering starts at $3 per user per month.

Image: Cloudflare