Securely communicating between on-premises services and clients in an external network

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a method for establishing secure connections between several services operating in an on-premises network and external devices operating in an external network. The method configures each service to communicate with a reverse proxy operating in the on-premises network. The reverse proxy establishes a secure connection with each service. The method programs the reverse proxy to communicate with a forward proxy that establishes communications with the external devices. In some embodiments, the forward proxy is part of the on-premises network, while in other embodiments the forward proxy is a cloud-based service. Through the reverse and forward proxies, the on-premises services communicate with the external devices securely. For instance, in some embodiments, the forward proxy hides internal network addresses (e.g., IP addresses) and domain names of on-premises services and allows administrators to configure network monitoring to monitor and block malicious activities. The reverse proxy, in these embodiments, simplifies the connection between the on-premises services and their respective forward proxy by taking over the task of establishing communication with a myriad of potentially different forward proxies that can be used in different deployments. All the on-premises services have to do is to communicate with the reverse proxy.