Skip to content
Cloudflare Docs

Network policies

With Cloudflare Zero Trust, you can configure policies to control network-level traffic leaving your endpoints. Using network selectors like IP addresses and ports, your policies will control access to any network origin. Because Cloudflare Zero Trust integrates with your identity provider, it also gives you the ability to create identity-based network policies. This means you can now control access to non-HTTP resources on a per-user basis regardless of where they are or what device they access that resource from.

A network policy consists of an Action as well as a logical expression that determines the scope of the action. To build an expression, you need to choose a Selector and an Operator, and enter a value or range of values in the Value field. You can use And and Or logical operators to evaluate multiple conditions.

If a condition in an expression joins a query attribute (such as Source IP) and a response attribute (such as Resolved IP), then the condition will be evaluated when the response is received.

Actions

Like actions in DNS and HTTP policies, actions in network policies define which decision you want to apply to a given set of elements. You can assign one action per policy.

Allow

API value: allow

Available selectors

Traffic

Identity

Device Posture

Policies with Allow actions allow network traffic to reach certain IPs or ports. For example, the following configuration allows specific users to reach a given IP address:

SelectorOperatorValueLogicAction
Destination IPin92.100.02.102AndAllow
Emailin*@example.com

Audit SSH

API value: audit_ssh

Available selectors

Traffic

Identity

Device Posture

Policies with Audit SSH actions allow administrators to log SSH traffic. Gateway will detect SSH traffic over port 22. For example, the following configuration logs SSH commands sent to a given IP address:

SelectorOperatorValueAction
Destination IPin203.0.113.83Audit SSH

For more information on SSH logging, refer to Configure SSH proxy and command logs.

Block

API value: block

Available selectors

Traffic

Identity

Device Posture

Policies with Block actions block network traffic from reaching certain IPs or ports. For example, the following configuration blocks all traffic directed to port 443:

SelectorOperatorValueAction
Destination Portin443Block

WARP client block notifications Early Access

Feature availability
WARP modesZero Trust plans ↗
  • Gateway with WARP
  • Secure Web Gateway without DNS filtering
Enterprise
SystemAvailabilityMinimum WARP version
Windows✅2024.1.159.0
macOS✅2024.1.160.0
Linux❌
iOS✅1.3
Android✅1.4
ChromeOS✅1.4

Turn on Display block notification for WARP client to display notifications for Gateway block events. Blocked users will receive an operating system notification from the WARP client with a custom message you set. If you do not set a custom message, the WARP client will display a default message. Custom messages must be 100 characters or less.

Upon selecting the notification, WARP will direct your users to a block page. Optionally, you can direct users to a custom URL, such as an internal support form.

To turn on client notifications on macOS devices running DisplayLink software, you may have to allow system notifications when mirroring your display. For more information, refer to the macOS documentation ↗.

Network Override

API value: l4_override

Available selectors

Traffic

Identity

Device Posture

Policies with Network Override actions override traffic directed to, or coming from, certain IPv4/IPv6 addresses or ports. Destination IPs can be public IPs or private IPs connected to your Zero Trust network. For example, the following configuration overrides traffic sent to a public IP with a private IP based on a user’s identity:

SelectorOperatorValueLogicAction
Destination IPin95.92.143.151AndNetwork Override
User Emailin*@example.comAnd
Override IP10.0.0.1

Selectors

Gateway matches network traffic against the following selectors, or criteria.

Application

You can apply network policies to a growing list of popular web applications. Refer to Application and app types for more information.

UI nameAPI exampleEvaluation phase
Applicationany(app.ids[*] in {505})Before DNS resolution

Destination Continent

The continent where the request is destined. Geolocation is determined from the target IP address. To specify a continent, enter its two-letter code into the Value field:

  • AF – Africa
  • AN – Antarctica
  • AS – Asia
  • EU – Europe
  • NA – North America
  • OC – Oceania
  • SA – South America
  • T1 – Tor network
UI nameAPI example
Destination Continent IP Geolocationnet.dst.geo.continent == “EU”

Destination Country

The country that the request is destined for. Geolocation is determined from the target IP address. To specify a country, enter its ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 code ↗ in the Value field.

UI nameAPI example
Destination Country IP Geolocationnet.dst.geo.country == “RU”

Destination IP

The IP address of the request’s target.

UI nameAPI example
Destination IPnet.dst.ip == "10.0.0.0/8"

Destination Port

The port number of the request’s target.

UI nameAPI example
Destination Portnet.dst.port == "2222"

Detected Protocol

The inferred network protocol based on our protocol detection.

UI nameAPI example
Detected Protocolnet.protocol.detection == "ssh"

This selector is available in early access for Enterprise users. For more information, contact your account team.

Device Posture

With the Device Posture selector, admins can use signals from end-user devices to secure access to their internal and external resources. For example, a security admin can choose to limit all access to internal applications based on whether specific software is installed on a device and/or if the device or software are configured in a particular way.

For more information on device posture checks, refer to Device posture.

UI nameAPI example
Passed Device Posture Checksany(device_posture.checks.failed[*] in {"1308749e-fcfb-4ebc-b051-fe022b632644"}), any(device_posture.checks.passed[*] in {"1308749e-fcfb-4ebc-b051-fe022b632644"})"

Protocol

The protocol used to send the packet.

UI nameAPI example
Protocolnet.protocol == "tcp"

Proxy Endpoint

The proxy server where your browser forwards HTTP traffic.

UI nameAPI example
Proxy Endpointproxy.endpoint == "3ele0ss56t.proxy.cloudflare-gateway.com"

SNI

The host whose Server Name Indication (SNI) header Gateway will filter traffic against. This will allow for an exact match.

This selector only applies to traffic on port 443.

UI nameAPI example
SNInet.sni.host == "www.example.com"

SNI Domain

The domain whose Server Name Indication (SNI) header Gateway will filter traffic against. For example, a rule for example.com will match example.com, www.example.com, and my.test.example.com.

This selector only applies to traffic on port 443.

UI nameAPI example
SNI Domainnet.sni.domains == "example.com"

Source Continent

The continent of the user making the request.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a continent, enter its two-letter code into the Value field:

ContinentCode
AfricaAF
AntarcticaAN
AsiaAS
EuropeEU
North AmericaNA
OceaniaOC
South AmericaSA
Tor networkT1
UI nameAPI exampleEvaluation phase
Source Continent IP Geolocationnet.src.geo.continent == “North America”Before DNS resolution

Source Country

The country of the user making the request.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a country, enter its ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code ↗ in the Value field.

UI nameAPI exampleEvaluation phase
Source Country IP Geolocationnet.src.geo.country == “RU”Before DNS resolution

Source Internal IP

Use this selector to apply network policies to a private IP address, assigned by a user’s local network, that requests arrive to Gateway from. This selector will only apply to users connected through a Magic GRE or IPSec tunnel.

UI nameAPI example
Source Internal IPnet.src.internal_src_ip == “192.168.86.0/27”

Source IP

UI nameAPI example
Source IPnet.src.ip == "10.0.0.0/8"

Source Port

UI nameAPI example
Source Portnet.src.port == "2222"

Users

Identity-based selectors include:

  • SAML Attributes
  • User Email
  • User Group Emails
  • User Group IDs
  • User Group Names
  • User Name

To use identity-based selectors, enable Gateway with WARP in the Zero Trust WARP client and enroll your user in your organization. For more information, refer to Identity-based policies.

Virtual Network

Use this selector to match all traffic routed through a specific Tunnel Virtual Network via the WARP client.

UI nameAPI example
Virtual Networknet.vnet_id == “957fc748-591a-e96s-a15d-1j90204a7923”

Comparison operators

Comparison operators are the way Gateway matches traffic to a selector. When you choose a Selector in the dashboard policy builder, the Operator dropdown menu will display the available options for that selector.

OperatorMeaning
isequals the defined value
is notdoes not equal the defined value
inmatches at least one of the defined values
not indoes not match any of the defined values
in listin a pre-defined list of values
not in listnot in a pre-defined list of values
matches regexregex evaluates to true
does not match regexregex evaluates to false
greater thanexceeds the defined number
greater than or equal toexceeds or equals the defined number
less thanbelow the defined number
less than or equal tobelow or equals the defined number

Value

In the Value field, you can input a single value when using an equality comparison operator (such as is) or multiple values when using a containment comparison operator (such as in). Additionally, you can use regular expressions (or regex) to specify a range of values for supported selectors.

Regular expressions

Gateway uses Rust to evaluate regular expressions. The Rust implementation is slightly different than regex libraries used elsewhere. For more information, refer to our guide for Wildcards. To evaluate if your regex matches, you can use Rustexp ↗.

If you want to match multiple values, you can use the pipe symbol (|) as an OR operator. In Gateway, you do not need to use an escape character (\) before the pipe symbol. For example, the following policy blocks requests to two SNI hosts if either appears in a request header:

SelectorOperatorValueAction
SNImatches regex.\*whispersystems.org|.\*signal.orgBlock

In addition to regular expressions, you can use logical operators to match multiple values.

Logical operators

To evaluate multiple conditions in an expression, select the And logical operator. These expressions can be compared further with the Or logical operator.

OperatorMeaning
Andmatch all of the conditions in the expression
Ormatch any of the conditions in the expression

The Or operator will only work with conditions in the same expression group. For example, you cannot compare conditions in Traffic with conditions in **Identity** or **Device Posture**.

Cloudflare DashboardDiscordCommunityLearning CenterSupport Portal