AWS Verified Access Preview — VPN-less Secure Network Access to Corporate Applications

Today, we announced the preview of AWS Verified Access, a new secure connectivity service that allows enterprises to enable local or remote secure access for their corporate applications without requiring a VPN.

Traditionally, remote access to applications when on the road or working from home is granted by a VPN. Once the remote workforce is authenticated on the VPN, they have access to a broad range of applications depending on multiple policies defined in siloed systems, such as the VPN gateway, the firewalls, the identity provider, the enterprise device management solution, etc. These policies are typically managed by different teams, potentially creating overlaps, making it difficult to diagnose application access issues. Internal applications often rely on older authentication protocols, like Kerberos, that were built with the LAN in mind, instead of modern protocols, like OIDC, that are better tuned to modern enterprise patterns. Customers told us that policy updates can take months to roll out.

Verified Access is built using the AWS Zero Trust security principles. Zero Trust is a conceptual model and an associated set of mechanisms that focus on providing security controls around digital assets that do not solely or fundamentally depend on traditional network controls or network perimeters.

Verified Access improves your organization’s security posture by leveraging multiple security inputs to grant access to applications. It grants access to applications only when users and their devices meet the specified security requirements. Examples of inputs are the user identity and role or the device security posture, among others. Verified Access validates each application request, regardless of user or network, before granting access. Having each application access request evaluated allows Verified Access to adapt the security posture based on changing conditions. For example, if the device security signals that your device posture is out of compliance, then Verified Access will not allow you to access the application anymore.

In my opinion, there are three main benefits when adopting Verified Access:

It is easy to use for IT administrators. As an IT Administrator, you can now easily set up applications for secure remote access. It provides a single configuration point to manage and enforce a multisystem security policy to allow or deny access to your corporate applications.

It provides an open ecosystem that allows you to retain your existing identity provider and device management system. I listed all our partners at the end of this post.

It is easy to use for end users. This is my preferred one. Your workforce is not required to use a VPN client anymore. A simple browser plugin is enough to securely grant access when the user and the device are identified and verified. As of today, we support Chrome and Firefox web browsers. This is something about which I can share my personal experience. Amazon adopted a VPN-less strategy a few years ago. It’s been a relief for my colleagues and me to be able to access most of our internal web applications without having to start a VPN client and keep it connected all day long.

Let’s See It in Action
I deployed a web server in a private VPC and exposed it to my end users through a private application load balancer (https://demo.seb.go-aws.com). I created a TLS certificate for the application external endpoint (secured.seb.go-aws.com). I also set up AWS Identity Center (successor of AWS SSO). In this demo, I will use it as a source for user identities. Now I am ready to expose this application to my remote workforce.

Creating a Verified Access endpoint is a four-step process. To get started, I navigate to the VPC page of the AWS Management Console. I first create the trust provider. A trust provider maintains and manages identity information for users and devices. When an application request is made, the identity information sent by the trust provider will be evaluated by Verified Access before allowing or denying the application request. I select Verified Access trust provider on the left-side navigation pane.

On the Create Verified Access trust provider page, I enter a Name and an optional Description. I enter the Policy reference name, an identifier that will be used when working with policy rules. I select the source of trust: User trust provider. For this demo, I select IAM Identity Center as the source of trust for user identities. Verified Access also works with other OpenID Connect-compliant providers. Finally, I select Create Verified Access trust provider.

I may repeat the operation when I have multiple trust providers. For example, I might have an identity-based trust provider to verify the identity of my end users and a device-based trust provider to verify the security posture of their devices.

I then create the Verified Identity instance. A Verified Access instance is a Regional AWS entity that evaluates application requests and grants access only when your security requirements are met.

On the Create Verified Access instance page, I enter a Name and an optional Description. I select the trust provider I just created. I can add additional trust provider types once the Verified Access instance is created.

Third, I create a Verified Access group.

A Verified Access group is a collection of applications that have similar security requirements. Each application within a Verified Access group shares a group-level policy. For example, you can group together all applications for “finance” users and use one common policy. This simplifies your policy management. You can use a single policy for a group of applications with similar access needs.

On the Create Verified Access group page, I enter a Name only. I will enter a policy at a later stage.

The fourth and last step before testing my setup is to create the endpoint.

A Verified Access endpoint is a regional resource that specifies the application that Verified Access will be providing access to. This is where your end users connect to. Each endpoint has its own DNS name and TLS certificate. After having evaluated incoming requests, the endpoint forwards authorized requests to your internal application, either an internal load balancer or a network interface. Verified Access supports network-level and application-level load balancers.

On the Create Verified Access endpoint page, I enter a Name and Description. I reference the Verified Access group that I just created.

In the Application details section, under Application domain, I enter the DNS name end users will use to access the application. For this demo, I use secured.seb.go-aws.com. Under Domain certificate ARN, I select a TLS certificate matching the DNS name. I created the certificate using AWS Certificate Manager.

On the Endpoint details section, I select VPC as Attachment type. I select one or multiple Security groups to attach to this endpoint. I enter awsnewsblog as Endpoint domain prefix. I select load balancer as Endpoint type. I select the Protocol (HTTP), then I enter the Port (80). I select the Load balancer ARN and the private Subnets where my load balancer is deployed.

Again, I leave the Policy details section empty. I will define a policy in the group instead. When I am done, I select Create Verified Access endpoint. It might take a few minutes to create.

Now it is time to grab a coffee and stretch my legs. When I return, I see the Verified Access endpoint is ✅ Active. I copy the Endpoint domain and add it as a CNAME record to my application DNS name (secured.seb.go-aws.com). I use Amazon Route 53 for this, but you can use your existing DNS server as well.

Then, I point my favorite browser to https://secured.seb.go-aws.com. The browser is redirected to IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO). I enter the username and password of my test user. I am not adding a screenshot for this. After the redirection, I receive the error message : Unauthorized. This is expected because there is no policy defined on the Verified Access endpoint. It denies every request by default.

On the Verified Access groups page, I select the Policy tab. Then I select the Modify Verified Access endpoint policy button to create an access policy.

I enter a policy allowing anybody authenticated and having an email address ending with @amazon.com. This is the email address I used for the user defined in AWS Identity Center. Note that the name after context is the name I entered as Policy reference name when I created the Verified Access trust provider. The documentation page has the details of the policy syntax, the attributes, and the operators I can use.

permit(principal, action, resource)
when {
    context.awsnewsblog.user.email.address like "*@amazon.com"
};

After a few minutes, Verified Access updates the policy and becomes Active again. I force my browser to refresh, and I see the internal application now available to my authenticated user.

What Our Partners Are Saying
Verified Access integrates with leading trust/network providers and SIEM/observability providers. Our partners have provided us with tons of helpful feedback during the preview period. They are ready to help you get started with Verified Access. Here are some blog posts and other resources they have published since launch.

Pricing and Availability

AWS Verified Access is now available in preview in 10 AWS Regions: US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London), and South America (São Paulo).

As usual, pricing is based on your usage. There is no upfront or fixed price. We charge per application (Verified Access endpoint) per hour, with tiers depending on the number of applications. Prices start in US East (N. Virginia) Region at $0.27 per verified Access endpoint and per hour. This price goes down to $0.20 per endpoint per hour when you have more than 200 applications.

On top of this, there is a charge of $0.02 per GB for data processed by Verified Access. You also incur standard AWS data transfer charges for all data transferred using Verified Access.

This billing model makes it easy to start small and then grow at your own pace.

Go and configure your first Verified Access access point today.