open-consul/website/source/docs/connect/index.html.md
Mitchell Hashimoto 8dbe0017bb Starting Docs (#46)
* website: first stab at Connect docs

* website: lots more various stuff (bad commit messages)

* website: getting started page for Connect

* website: intentions

* website: intention APIs

* website: agent API docs

* website: document agent/catalog proxy kind service values

* website: /v1/catalog/connect/:service

* website: intention CLI docs

* website: custom proxy docs

* website: remove dedicated getting started guide

* website: add docs for CA API endpoints

* website: add docs for connect ca commands

* website: add proxy CLI docs

* website: clean up proxy command, add dev docs

* website: todo pages

* website: connect security
2018-06-25 12:24:05 -07:00

44 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown

---
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Connect (Service Segmentation)"
sidebar_current: "docs-connect-index"
description: |-
Consul Connect provides service-to-service connection authorization and encryption using mutual TLS.
---
# Connect
Consul Connect provides service-to-service connection authorization
and encryption using mutual TLS. Applications can use
[sidecar proxies](/docs/connect/proxies.html)
to automatically establish TLS connections for inbound and outbound connections
without being aware of Connect at all. Applications may also
[natively integrate with Connect](/docs/connect/native.html)
for optimal performance and security.
## How it Works
TODO
## Eliminating East-West Firewalls
East-west firewalls are the typical tool for network security in a static world.
East-west is the transfer of data from server to server within a datacenter,
versus North-south traffic which describes end user to server communications.
These firewalls wrap services with ingress/egress policies. This perimeter-based
approach is difficult to scale in a dynamic world with dozens or hundreds of
services or where machines may be frequently created or destroyed. Firewalls
create a sprawl of rules for each service instance that quickly becomes
overly difficult to maintain.
Service security in a dynamic world is best solved through service-to-service
authentication and authorization. Instead of IP-based network security,
services can be deployed to low-trust networks and rely on service-identity
based security over in-transit data encryption.
Connect enables service segmentation by securing service-to-service
communications through mutual TLS and transparent proxying on zero-trust
networks. This allows direct service communication without relying on firewalls
for east-west traffic security.