About Defguard

What is Defguard?

Defguard is an enterprise-ready platform built on top of WireGuard®, designed to make private networking simple, scalable, and secure.

It integrates identity management, policy enforcement, and secure access provisioning into a single, cohesive system - whether you deploy it in your own infrastructure or in the cloud.

Defguard helps organizations:

• Manage VPN access for distributed teams.

• Integrate identity sources such as LDAP, Active Directory, or external OIDC providers.

• Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA).

• Automate device enrollment.

• Simplify network segmentation and access control using policies.

For a detailed list of features go to the Features overview section.

Why choose Defguard?

Defguard was built with security, transparency, and control at its core.

Here’s why organizations choose it over traditional VPN management or proprietary systems:

🏗️ Self-Hosted and Privacy-Focused

Defguard can be deployed on your own infrastructure, giving you full ownership of data and keys.

No external cloud relay, no hidden telemetry - your traffic and user data never leave your environment.

🔒 Zero Trust by Design

Authentication and authorization with MFA happen continuously, not just at login.

Access decisions are policy-driven and identity-based, reducing lateral movement risks and insider threats.

🔑 True MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) for VPN Access

Most applications provide MFA only when opening or logging into the app - not during the VPN connection itself.

Defguard takes a different approach.

Thanks to its internal Identity Provider (IdP), Defguard enforces real, connection-level MFA, ensuring that multi-factor authentication is applied as part of the VPN handshake - not just the UI login step.

Even when using external OIDC providers (Google, Microsoft, or a custom one supported by Defguard), Defguard still applies its internal IdP-based MFA for actual VPN session authentication.

This design delivers true, end-to-end verification that protects both users and infrastructure from credential theft or token replay attacks.

⚙️ Open, Extensible, and Interoperable

Defguard integrates cleanly with your existing identity stack - LDAP, AD, or OIDC - without forcing vendor lock-in.

Its webhooks make it easy to extend or automate within DevOps workflows.

🧭 Simple for Users, Powerful for Admins

End users enjoy one-click VPN access via the Defguard apps, while admins gain granular control through a modern web interface.

🧩 Modular and Scalable

Each component (Core, Gateway, Proxy) can be deployed independently, allowing flexible scaling - from a single office setup to multi-region enterprise deployments.

🧱 Security Built into the Development Process

Defguard follows modern software supply-chain and security best practices:

• Signed container images and binaries.

• Publishing SBOMs.

• Scanning for and reacting to vulnerabilities on a daily basis.

• Regular penetration testing.

🌱 Open Source and Transparent by Design

Defguard is open source - you can inspect, audit, and contribute to the code that powers your infrastructure.

We believe transparency is a cornerstone of security and trust.

Our approach goes beyond code:

• Open organisation: we share our development roadmap, security practices, and architecture decisions publicly.

• Open processes: our builds, signing, and release workflows are verifiable end-to-end.

• Open security scans: we publish penetration tests reports, and daily SBOM CVE scan reports.

• Community-driven development: we welcome feedback, issues, and contributions from users and integrators.

• No black boxes: every component, from Core to Gateway, can be deployed, configured, and verified independently.

Defguard’s openness ensures trust through verifiability, not promises — aligning with the principles of modern, transparent cybersecurity.

How is Defguard built?

Defguard consists of several modular services that can be deployed together or separately, depending on your architecture:

• Core – the main service responsible for user management, authentication, configuration storage, and integrations.

• VPN Gateway – provides the VPN endpoint for clients; runs WireGuard and synchronizes configuration with Core.

• Public Proxy – an optional component that handles communication between the Core and external services or clients in restricted environments.

• Desktop and Mobile Apps – client applications for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS, allowing users to connect easily and securely.

This layered architecture with a strict division of responsibility guarantees maximum security (verified by multiple in-depth penetration tests).

For the reasoning behind this division, please refer to the Architecture documentation.