Name: Shadow Licensing Uncovered: Smart Control for Unmanaged Software
Start: 2026-02-04T10:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-04T17:00:00+00:00
Location: OpenLM

Cloudflare license management with OpenLM

Cloudflare is a global network services provider known for its Content Delivery Network (CDN), DDoS protection, and, increasingly, its comprehensive Zero Trust security platform (Cloudflare One). While it started as a website performance tool, it has evolved into a critical enterprise security layer that manages employee access to internal applications and the internet.

Monitoring Cloudflare usage—specifically the Cloudflare Zero Trust (formerly Cloudflare for Teams) suite—is vital for modern IT and Security Operations teams. As organizations adopt “Zero Trust” architectures to replace traditional VPNs, the cost of these per-seat licenses becomes a significant line item that requires active management.

Cloudflare

What is Cloudflare: Beyond the CDN

While Cloudflare’s traditional website plans (Pro, Business) are billed per domain, its enterprise workforce solutions are billed per user.

Cloudflare Access: Replaces VPNs by securing internal applications.
Cloudflare Gateway: Protects users from malware and enforces content filtering on the open web.
Remote Browser Isolation (RBI): Runs browsing sessions in a secure cloud container.

The challenge for IT is that these “Zero Trust” seats are often provisioned automatically via Identity Providers (IdP) like Okta or Azure AD, leading to “license creep” where every user in the directory gets a paid seat, regardless of whether they actually use the secure gateway or access internal apps.

Licensing schemas of Cloudflare: What you must know

Cloudflare’s workforce products typically follow a per-user-per-month model.

Pay-as-you-go / Free: Basic plans often cover up to 50 users, but enterprise features (like longer log retention, detailed analytics, and RBI) incur per-seat costs.
Contracted enterprise seats: Large organizations purchase a block of seats (e.g., 1,000 Gateway licenses).
The optimization challenge: If a contractor finishes their project but their account remains active in the IdP, Cloudflare may continue to count them as a billable “active” user. Furthermore, some users may be assigned a “Gateway + Access” bundle but only ever use one feature, representing a potential downgrade opportunity.

OpenLM’s solution for Cloudflare license optimization

OpenLM extends its SaaS management capabilities to Cloudflare by connecting to the Cloudflare API. This provides granular visibility into who is actually connecting to the Zero Trust network and who is holding a license they don’t use.

OpenLM capability	Value for Cloudflare licenses
Inactive User detection	Identify users who have not authenticated via Cloudflare Access or sent traffic through the Cloudflare Gateway in the last 30-90 days.
Security and Offboarding	Automatically flag “zombie” accounts—users who have left the company but still possess valid credentials to access the Zero Trust network, closing critical security gaps.
License right-sizing	Compare the number of purchased Zero Trust seats against the actual concurrent usage and active user count. This data is critical for negotiating Enterprise Agreement (EA) renewals.
Activity monitoring	Track which internal applications (protected by Cloudflare Access) are actually being used. If an internal tool has zero traffic, it might be a candidate for decommissioning, saving both infrastructure and licensing costs.

OpenLM advantages for Cloudflare license usage monitoring

OpenLM brings an asset management discipline to security software, ensuring that your “Zero Trust” budget doesn’t spiral out of control.

Audit-ready compliance: Maintain a historical log of user access for compliance audits (SOC2, ISO 27001), proving exactly who had access to the network and when.
Unified view: Manage Cloudflare security licenses alongside other developer and IT tools (like GitHub, Jira, and PagerDuty). This helps correlate “Developer” activity; if a user is active in GitHub but inactive in Cloudflare Gateway, it may indicate a misconfiguration or a security policy violation.
Cost control: By identifying inactive users before your annual renewal, you can reduce your committed seat count, often saving thousands of dollars in wasted subscription fees.