Our own product Enterprise · Information security

Giraffic

A secure corporate network on top of any communication channel. Offices, data centres, employees, contractors and industrial equipment in one perimeter, where access is granted to a specific service and port rather than to the whole network — and revoked in seconds.

Solution class
Overlay network with access control and device admission
Platforms
Windows, macOS, Linux — x86, x86-64, ARM64
Deployment
Air-gapped on the client’s premises or as a cloud service
Security foundation
Certificates issued by the company’s own certificate authority
Giraffic dashboard: server list with P2P addresses, access rules and online history Cover: network management console
01 — The problem

Access is granted to the network, not to the service

Remote sites, mobile crews, contractors and industrial gateways connect over a mix of channels — fibre, LTE, satellite — almost always behind NAT and without public IP addresses. They need secure connectivity and managed access, and connecting the next site should not turn into a project of its own.

How it is usually done
  • 01All traffic is routed through a VPN concentrator in the data centre. Two neighbouring sites talk to each other through it too — extra latency and extra load on the backbone.
  • 02The concentrator becomes a single point of failure: while it is down, nobody has connectivity.
  • 03Every new site is configured by hand — tunnel, routes, rules, sometimes with an engineer travelling on site.
  • 04A contractor gets access “to the network” rather than to a specific environment, and it is taken away weeks after the work is done.
  • 05Device posture is checked once, at the door. After that, a laptop with antivirus switched off and an unencrypted disk works on equal terms with a corporate workstation.

A separate challenge of recent years: the familiar Western solutions in this class have left the Russian market, taking updates, support and licence renewals with them.

02 — How it works

A network without a concentrator

The dashboard issues each node a certificate from the company’s own certificate authority, with the node’s network address and groups embedded in it. Nodes find each other through beacons and build tunnels directly, bypassing the data centre. Access rules are enforced on the node itself, based on the groups in its certificate, so policy keeps working even when the dashboard is unreachable.

Go · PKI · NAC · SSH auto-deploy · On-premise / Cloud
01

Management dashboard

A single point of administration: organisations, networks, devices, groups, access rules, certificate issuance, device posture control, audit log and reports.

02

Beacons and relay nodes

Node discovery, NAT traversal and relaying for nodes behind symmetric NAT. Several beacons per network with health checks and automatic failover. Deployed from the dashboard over SSH.

03

Client agent

Windows, macOS and Linux, including ARM. A system service keeps the tunnel up and reports device posture; the tray app talks to it locally. Closing the window does not mean leaving the network.

03 — Features

What the company gets

Access · Network · Security · Operations
01

Access to a port, not a network

Rules are defined between groups of users and groups of resources, down to protocol and port. An employee gets access to the service they need, not to the whole subnet.

02

Connected in minutes

A new device joins the network with a one-time token: no manual key distribution, no route configuration and no engineer visiting the site.

03

Access revoked in seconds

The certificate goes on the organisation’s blocklist and live tunnels are torn down immediately, without waiting for a reconnect. An employee leaving or a contract ending is handled in a single action.

04

Direct-connection speed

Traffic flows directly between nodes: lower latency, less load on backbone links. NAT is traversed automatically, and a relay node is picked for difficult connections.

05

Certificate-based security

The company’s certificate authority issues, rotates on schedule and revokes certificates. A node’s address and groups are embedded in its certificate and cannot be spoofed.

06

Built-in device control

Admission based on actual device posture: OS version, disk encryption, firewall, antivirus, required and forbidden processes. Non-compliant devices are isolated automatically.

07

Offices, data centres and equipment on one network

Servers, workstations, industrial gateways and IIoT devices get addresses in a shared address space. A single installation hosts several isolated networks, each with its own addressing.

08

Resilient connectivity

Several beacons per network with health checks and automatic failover. Traffic obfuscation for filtered links and DPI. Works over LTE and satellite.

09

Backups

Configuration backups from the UI and through a separate REST API with its own rotating token — easy to plug into your existing backup routine.

10

Audit and SIEM export

An administrator activity log, dashboard event export to an external syslog or SIEM, device and policy compliance reports — ready-made artefacts for an audit.

11

Organisations and roles

Super administrator, organisation administrator and a user with a personal area for their own devices. One installation serves a holding company with independent perimeters.

12

Works in an air-gapped perimeter

The licence is a signed file and checking it needs no connection to an external server. Installation makes no calls to external registries or repositories. The interface is in Russian.

Networks and devices
Access rules between groups
Device posture control
Client on the device
What changes

From a project to a routine

Minutes
To connect a site or an employee — instead of configuring tunnels and routes by hand
Seconds
To revoke access — instead of hours and days of approvals across several systems
Port
Access granularity — instead of rights to the entire corporate network
04 — Use cases

Where it works

01

Branches and sites

Offices, warehouses, production sites and data centres in a single address space. Traffic between two sites goes directly rather than through a central node — including where there are no public IP addresses.

02

Remote employees

A laptop connects with a token from the dashboard and sees only the systems its owner’s role requires. When someone leaves, access is closed in a single action, without administrators going through every service.

03

Contractors and vendors

Access strictly to a list of services for the duration of the work, with posture checks on the contractor’s device. When the contract ends, access is revoked immediately instead of lingering in the system.

04

Equipment and telemetry

Encrypted transport for data from industrial gateways and IIoT over LTE and satellite, with segmentation down to “site — specific collection server”. ARM platforms are supported.

05 — Comparison

How this differs from a VPN concentrator

Parameter
Classic setup
Giraffic
Traffic path
Through a concentrator in the data centre
Directly between nodes, the data centre is not in the data path
Point of failure
Concentrator down — nobody has connectivity
Several beacons with automatic failover; tunnels survive the dashboard being unavailable
What is granted
Access to the whole network
Access to a specific service, protocol and port
Connecting a site
Manual setup, sometimes an engineer on site
One-time token, automatic deployment from the dashboard
Revoking access
Hours or days, system by system
Seconds: the certificate is blocklisted and live tunnels are torn down
Device posture
Checked once when access is granted, or not at all
Checked before connecting and while working; non-compliance leads to isolation
Deployment
Hardware at each site, external update services
Air-gapped on the client’s premises or as a cloud service
06 — Engineering guarantees

Why it holds up in production

The difference between a demo and real operation is how the system behaves when something goes wrong. Here are three decisions we made precisely for that case.

01

The server makes the call

The agent only sends facts about the device’s state. Policy compliance is computed by the dashboard. A compromised client cannot declare itself trusted — it takes no part in the decision.

02

Silence is not “all clear”

A check has an expiry date. A device that stops reporting does not stay on the trusted list out of habit: its status changes to “unconfirmed”.

03

Automation won’t take the network down

Quarantine only kicks in after several failed reports in a row. Beacons and infrastructure nodes are never cut off. If too large a share of devices is about to be isolated, the dashboard raises an alarm instead of disconnecting them en masse.

07 — Rollout

A pilot in four steps

We start by observing and only then switch on enforcement — so that policy never gets in the way of operational processes.

1

Dashboard and beacons

We deploy the management dashboard and one or two beacons. Installation runs from the UI over SSH and the image is built on the target server — no external registries required.

2

Networks and policies

We set up organisations, networks and groups and describe access rules between groups of users and resources. Devices join with one-time tokens.

3

Observation mode

We switch on device posture control without consequences. You can see what share of the fleet does not meet security requirements, and which checks it fails.

4

Enforcement mode

We switch policies to enforcement. Non-compliant devices are isolated, while infrastructure stays protected by the safeguards.

What we need from you
  • A virtual server for the management dashboard
  • One or two nodes with public addresses for the beacons
  • An agreed list of device posture checks
  • Pilot success criteria, fixed before the start
Discuss a pilot