Today, we're excited to unveil the latest iteration of the Border0 connector, a fully cloud-managed solution designed to make access management effortless and all managed from the Border0 Dashboard. Built on valuable feedback from our user community, this update specifically tackles the complexities of managing dynamic and ephemeral services in today's fast-paced landscape.
Today, we're excited to unveil the latest iteration of the Border0 connector, a fully cloud-managed solution designed to make access management effortless and all managed from the Border0 Dashboard. Built on valuable feedback from our user community, this update specifically tackles the complexities of managing dynamic and ephemeral services in today's fast-paced landscape.
With the new Border0 connector, you can discover and manage Border0 services directly from our centralized admin portal. This eliminates the need for complex YAML configuration files, making your infrastructure simpler to manage, more secure, and more accessible than ever before.
Getting started with the new Border0 connector is easy. Whether you choose to download the binary directly or opt for the new Debian or RPM installers, the installation process is hassle-free. After downloading the Border0 CLI tool, simply run the sudo border0 connector install command which will install and start the Border0 service.
Your Border0 service will immediately dial out to the Border0 cloud, register itself, and be ready for use. It's as simple as that—you're off to the races!
Once your connector is registered, you can manage everything from the Border0 admin portal. This centralized dashboard allows administrators to manage all connectors and Border0 sockets remotely.
By default, the built-in SSH service is enabled for every connector, meaning you’ll be able to get an SSH shell right away, and you’ll have an SSO enabled bastion host with zero effort.
One of the powerful new features is the many discovery plugins that can be enabled for a connector. These can be used to discover various AWS resources such as EC2, ECS, or RDS instances. Similarly, if the connector has access to your Kubernetes API, it can find all your Kubernetes services or, for Docker, all your Docker containers. Finally, a network scanner can be enabled to find SSH, databases, or web services.
The various discovery plugins will make it easy to find resources in the environment where the connector is running. Discovered services will show up in the discovered resources tab as shown below. From here administrators can quickly turn these newly discovered resources into Border0 Services (Sockets). Since with the help of the discovery plugins we already know most of the parameters needed, such as the service type, upstream IP address, and port, etc., turning these into Border0 services is easy. Just take a look at the example below; it only takes a few seconds between discovering an EC2 instance, creating a Border0 socket for the EC2 instance, and actually having a shell on the EC2 instance! That's as easy as it gets!
While we were improving the connector, we’ve also revisited some of the permissions for the connector token. We’ve made sure the connector only needs minimal permissions to your Border0 account. Enough to discover resources in your network and to bring up a tunnel, but no ability to manage any of your Border0 resources. This is inline with common best practices and only requires the minimum permissions needed.
Getting started with the new Border0 connector has never been easier. Simply follow these instructions to install the connector. Once installed, type in sudo border0 connector install and your connector is available for use. Managing and creating Border0 sockets can now be done all from the admin portal. The various plugins make it easy to discover all relevant resources, which can then, with a single click, be turned into Border0 Sockets. Best of all, everything is real-time, making working with Border0 both easier than ever and a pleasure to manage resources.
Ready to experience the future of access management? Sign up for our free, fully-functional community edition to discover how the Border0 connector can revolutionize your approach to secure, efficient, and centralized access management.