Cloudflare Access JWT is a crucial component of Cloudflare’s Access product. As part of our Server Management Service, Bobcares provides answers to all of your questions.

Cloudflare Access JWT

An essential part of Cloudflare’s Access offering, which offers identity-aware access control to online resources and applications, is Cloudflare Access JWT. JWT is a small, secure URL-based representation for transferable claims between two parties. Cloudflare Access uses JWT to verify user identity and grant access to protected resources. The general working of Cloudflare Access JWT is as follows:

Working

Cloudflare Access intercepts a request made by a user trying to use a protected resource, like a web app or an API endpoint. Following the redirect, an authentication page from Cloudflare will appear asking the user to log in with their identity provider (such as Google, Okta, or an internal LDAP directory).

Cloudflare creates a JWT with multiple claims that reflect user details, including email address, user ID, group memberships, and any custom attributes, after successful verification. Cloudflare has digitally signed these assertions to ensure their integrity.

The Access checks the JWT after its creation to make sure it is still valid and doesn’t have any issues. Using the data in the JWT, Cloudflare Access also confirms if the user is permitted to use the resource that has been requested.

After the JWT is verified, the Access sends the request to the origin server hosting the protected resource by attaching it as an HTTP header.

The request and JWT are sent to the origin server. After that, it can examine the JWT to gather user data and decide how to provide access based on the user’s identity and rights.

To improve security, Cloudflare Access JWTs usually have a short validity time. The user will need to re-verify in order to receive a new JWT if their current one expires. In order to receive new JWTs without forcing the user to log in again, several systems enable a token refreshing process.

Without the need for complicated infrastructure or proprietary code, JWTs offer a simple and safe method for creating identity-aware access control for online resources and apps.

[Need to know more? We’re available 24/7.]

Conclusion

Our Tech team went over the details of Cloudflare Access JWT in this article.