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Introduction

{% embed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PF7edMGBwk" %}

What is Defguard?

In a nutshell, from a functionality point defguard is an OpenID Identity Provider (SSO for your apps) and Wireguard VPN Service for building secure private networks (roadwarrior, mesh/peer-to-peer, site-to-site).

On a broader aspect, it's a security platform for building secure and privacy-aware organizations (with its secure architecture).

By design defguard core is meant to be deployed in your secure network segments (available only from an internal network or by VPN) and operations that require public access (like user onboarding, enrollment, password reset, etc.) are done using a secure proxy:

This architecture and approach gives you options - either you secure your systems (with VPN&Proxy), or you can deploy typical architecture without VPN/Gateway&Proxy - and defguard as an OIDC provider and your apps can be available from the Internet:

Simple Cloud architecture secured only with HTTPS

Why should I care for a secure platform and not just functionalities (i just want VPN/OpenID...)?

You may not, you can just use defguard selected modules (and disable others in UI and not even see them) and be happy with a really nice UI to manage users, apps, networks, devices, and hardware security keys.

Or use another dedicated system just for that functionality (there are a lot OpenID/Identity, Wireguard VPN providers - commercial or open-source), but what typically happens is you start with one selected functionality/system - and over time (when your user base, network, and apps grow) - you need another functionality. Then, you need to deploy another and another system - and integrate them. Most of the time it's really hard (and sometimes impossible) to integrate those systems - even if you can, it's costly. But what is most important: it takes time to integrate various systems into one platform, and even if you do it - most likely it will not be easy to use by users and hard to maintain by developers and administrators.

That's why defguard came to be, being a company that:

  • built small projects/organizations that grew over time we saw how difficult and costly it is to expand
  • at the same time working with large organizations - we saw the horror of users that use multiple (ugly and unintuitive systems) - and large devops/admin/developer teams to maintain them

What does it mean to build a secure "organization" (or even a small network like a homelab)?

First of all, It means implementing a secure architecture for your network and systems. In the age of "cloud," all systems (and data) are public. But that should be for you to decide!

That's why defguard architecture (and implementation) is secure (and thoroughly and comprehensively audited by one of the best security researchers). If you want full privacy, defguard only exposes its VPN gateway (to provide a secure channel to all internal systems that should be behind the firewall) and the public proxy (for the remote user enrollment process).

It also means having an architecture (systems, networks), that will cover all fundamental processes, like:

  • secure remote user enrollment (self-service)
  • user self-service to manage their own data, change passwords, add/remove VPN devices, connect securely to networks
  • for administrators to easily setup, manage and monitor multiple VPN networks (with access control) to provide a secure connection to applications that should not be visible on the internet
  • deploy an Identity Provider to have one place to manage all users
  • that Identity Provider should provide SSO functionality to enable users to log in to all systems with one login/password
    • have 2FA/MFA functionality to harden security
  • setup Yubikey Hardware keys to enable the best 2FA security, secure SSH login with private keys on a secure hardware
  • integrate all your systems with API, and Webhooks (to access defguard functionalities or users' data)

Building a secure organization has always been difficult and costly. Defguard provides a beautiful, easy-to-use (business users) and deploy (admin/DevOps) fundament to make your organization secure.

Features

SSO - OpenID Connect provider

  • Secure remote (over the internet) user enrollment
  • User onboarding after enrollment
  • LDAP (tested on OpenLDAP) synchronization
  • nice UI to manage users
  • Users self-service (besides typical data management, users can revoke access to granted apps, MFA, Wireguard, etc.)

Multi-Factor/2FA Authentication

  • Time-based One-Time Password Algorithm (TOTP - e.g. Google Authenticator)
  • WebAuthn / FIDO2 - for hardware key authentication support (eg. YubiKey, FaceID, TouchID, ...)
  • Web3 - authentication with crypto software and hardware wallets using Metamask, Ledger Extension

WireGuard VPN

  • Multi-Factor Authentication using our desktop client
  • multiple VPN Locations (networks/sites) - with defined access (all users or only Admin group)
  • multiple Gateways for each VPN Location (high availability/failover) - supported on a cluster of routers/firewalls for Linux, FreeBSD/PFSense/OPNSense
  • import your current WireGuard server configuration (with a wizard!)
  • easy device setup by users themselves (self-service)
  • automatic IP allocation
  • kernel (Linux, FreeBSD/OPNSense/PFSense) & userspace WireGuard support
  • dashboard and statistics overview of connected users/devices for admins

defguard is not an official WireGuard project, and WireGuard is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.

Yubikey Provisioning

Yubikey hardware keys provisioning for users with one click

Integrations

Webhooks & REST API

Build with Rust for portability, security, and speed

Pentested!

Checked by professional security researchers (see comprehensive security report)

Guides: Jump right in

Follow our handy guides to get started on the basics as quickly as possible:

{% content-ref url="features/setting-up-your-instance/" %} setting-up-your-instance {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="features/wireguard/create-your-vpn-network.md" %} create-your-vpn-network.md {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="features/ldap-synchronization-setup/" %} ldap-synchronization-setup {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="community-features/webhooks.md" %} webhooks.md {% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="help/desktop-client/" %} desktop-client {% endcontent-ref %}

Fundamentals: Dive a little deeper

Learn the fundamentals of Defguard to get a deeper understanding of our main features:

{% content-ref url="in-depth/architecture.md" %} architecture.md {% endcontent-ref %}