Case Study: Science Museum of Minnesota achieves overnight remote-work readiness and seamless access to critical apps with Cloudflare Access

Faced with an overnight order to work remotely, the Science Museum of Minnesota used Cloudflare Access to keep employees connected to critical apps

The Science Museum of Minnesota, a long‑standing natural history and STEM education institution, had migrated its systems to Google Cloud but found Google’s Identity‑Aware Proxy complex and time‑consuming to manage—especially with frequent certificate renewals. When the COVID‑19 pandemic forced an overnight shift to remote work, scaling the museum’s VPN to hundreds of employees was impractical and the organization needed a faster, simpler way to secure remote access to critical apps like the CRM, general ledger, and purchase systems.

The museum implemented Cloudflare Access, using existing Google IDs for SSO and moving Remote Desktop sessions and web apps behind Access. The setup was quick and eliminated the need for a broad VPN rollout, delivering seamless logins, improved security for admin and developer pages, and measurable IT productivity savings. As a result, staff were able to work remotely immediately, the IT team spends far less time on maintenance, and the museum can focus on expanding online programming.

Science Museum of Minnesota

Joel Miles

Infrastructure Developer