Guard access to sensitive applications with Persona and Cloudflare Access

In 2024, Google Cloud’s Mandiant team documented how UNC3944 used social engineering to take over privileged accounts and gain access to cloud infrastructure, security tools, and business applications. By impersonating employees and persuading help desks to reset authentication factors, attackers gained a foothold they could use to reach other systems and steal sensitive data.

These attacks expose a troubling security vulnerability: a successful sign-in does not always mean the person accessing an application is the employee they claim to be. When that application holds customer records, financial information, or administrative controls, the consequences of misplaced trust can be detrimental.

Persona integrates with Cloudflare Zero Trust Network Access to help organizations verify the person requesting access to sensitive applications.

How Persona and Cloudflare Access work together

Cloudflare Access applies your organization’s access policies to protected SaaS, internal, and self-hosted applications, while Persona verifies the person signing in using identity checks your organization selects.

Your existing identity provider remains the source of truth for employee account information. Persona simply compares the verified identity against the employee profile in that system, helping establish that the person completing verification is the employee associated with the account.

Why add Persona to Cloudflare Access?

Gain greater confidence in the person signing in

Stolen or shared credentials can give attackers access to sensitive systems, putting organizations at risk of ransomware attacks and legal penalties if sensitive data is compromised. Verifying the person and comparing their identity against the employee profile gives security and IT teams more evidence that the individual requesting access is the intended employee.

Apply stronger verification for higher-risk access

For higher-risk situations, where unauthorized access could cause greater harm, decide which applications and users require identity verification and stronger checks.

For example, an organization could require engineers who have already verified their identity to complete a quick selfie reverification before accessing a protected source code repository. This improves confidence that the person gaining access is the engineer associated with the account.

Build on the access controls you already use

The integration connects Persona’s verification flow with Cloudflare’s policy enforcement through OIDC. Security teams can introduce identity verification within their existing application access process and continue managing access policies in Cloudflare. Their IAM provider continues to manage employee accounts, while Persona adds confidence in the individual using them.

Get started with Persona and Cloudflare

Persona helps organizations such as Figma, Ro, Legora, and Twilio verify identities. Its workforce identity solution supports checks at critical moments, including onboarding, account recovery, device changes, and access to sensitive applications.

Explore Persona’s workforce identity solution to learn how you can verify employees at critical moments, or request a demo to learn how the ZTNA integration works.