HashiCorp Boundary offers a modern approach for dynamic infrastructure access. Boundary is built for modern infrastructure, particularly cloud environments where resources are dynamic, ephemeral, and constantly changing. Traditional approaches to remote access often rely on static IP addresses, firewall rules, and network-based policies that can become difficult to maintain or break as infrastructure changes. Boundary addresses this challenge with built-in automation that discovers infrastructure resources and adapts access as those resources change, without requiring agents. This allows organizations to manage access based on identity rather than network location.

Boundary also integrates tightly with the broader HashiCorp ecosystem, particularly HashiCorp Vault, to generate dynamic, short-lived credentials for infrastructure access. Credentials can be provided at the point of access and managed on the user’s behalf, reducing reliance on long-lived static credentials and preventing users from needing to handle or store credentials themselves.

Once access is established, Boundary manages the session and can record supported protocols for later playback, providing visibility into user activity and an audit trail that can support compliance, incident investigation, and remediation following a security event.

When an end-user authenticates to Boundary, they can use their existing tools and workflows to connect to infrastructure resources. This allows them be more productive without learning or adopting new tools or practices.

Boundary use cases

HashiCorp Boundary provides identity-based access to infrastructure across cloud, on-premises, and segmented network environments. Organizations can use Boundary to standardize infrastructure access, connect to resources across network boundaries, manage credentials, and monitor privileged sessions. This page describes common Boundary use cases and compares Boundary to other remote access solutions like VPNs and PAM tools. To understand Boundary in more depth first, see what Boundary is.

Zero trust access

Organizations need to provide users with access to infrastructure while limiting access to only the resources they are authorized to use. Network-based access models can provide broader network connectivity than users need to complete their work.

Boundary's access-on-demand workflow connects trusted identities to infrastructure services based on granular, administrator-defined permission grants. Boundary authenticates and authorizes users before establishing sessions to authorized resources without requiring direct network access to those resources.

Multi-cloud access

Organizations that operate infrastructure across multiple cloud providers, private data centers, or other environments can have different access workflows for each environment. Maintaining separate access methods increases operational complexity for administrators and creates an inconsistent experience for users.

Boundary provides a common identity-based access workflow across infrastructure environments. Administrators can manage access through Boundary while users use a consistent workflow to connect to authorized targets regardless of where those targets run.

Segmented network access

Organizations often isolate infrastructure across network segments, environments, or regions to limit direct connectivity to sensitive resources. Network segmentation can make it difficult for users to access targets that are not directly reachable from their local network.

Boundary multi-hop sessions route connections through multiple workers to reach targets across segmented networks. This approach lets organizations maintain network segmentation while providing users with a consistent workflow for accessing infrastructure.

For example, an organization can deploy workers in separate network segments and use multi-hop sessions to provide access to targets in private networks without requiring direct connectivity between the user's client and the target.

Single sign-on with integrated secrets management

Boundary enables a single sign-on (SSO) access model with authentication from trusted identity providers, such as Microsoft Entra ID, Auth0, and Okta. Once authenticated, users can create sessions with integrated credential management from HashiCorp Vault without the need to re-authenticate.

Organizations can use Boundary with Vault to provide credentials for authorized target sessions without distributing those credentials directly to users.

Session monitoring

Boundary provides session monitoring capabilities that give security administrators visibility into user access. Sessions are logged and consumable via the Boundary Admin UI as well as business intelligence (BI) and security information and event management (SIEM) tools.

Administrators can also enable session recording on supported targets. When you enable session recording on a target, a worker records sessions that access that target from the time the user requests access until that access is terminated. Administrators can view the recordings later using a session player that runs in a browser.

How does Boundary compare to other access solutions?

It can be difficult to understand how to compare the different remote access security solutions that are available on the market. Is one a replacement for another? Are they complementary? Refer to the following topics for a more detailed comparison of Boundary to specific technologies:

The comparisons are philosophical in nature and are not intended to be oppositional. Our goal is to provide readers with a better understanding of how access management solutions overlap with Boundary and where Boundary does things differently.