Teleport

Teleport acts as a self‑hosted certificate authority and access proxy for a range of infrastructure protocols. It issues short‑lived certificates for SSH, Kubernetes, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and Model Context Protocol servers, eliminating the need for long‑lived keys or passwords. The system provides single sign‑on via SSO providers, multi‑factor authentication, and role‑based or attribute‑based access controls that can be applied uniformly to users, machines, and workloads.

The platform includes a tunneling mechanism that enables secure access to resources behind NATs or firewalls without VPNs or bastion hosts, and it records session activity for audit purposes across SSH, Kubernetes, database, RDP, and web sessions. A unified identity layer ties together human users, service accounts, and AI agents, supporting just‑in‑time privileges and credential‑free authentication.

Teleport is distributed as a single Go binary that can run as a Linux daemon or a Kubernetes deployment. It is open‑source under the Apache‑2.0 license, free to use without subscription, and aims to simplify identity management and access governance for modern infrastructure.