Secure CI/CD in VPC Private Subnets with a Proxy
The VPN was up, the code was ready, but the CI/CD runner sat stranded, powerless inside a VPC private subnet.
This is a problem teams hit again and again. You want the security of private subnets, but your pipeline still needs to talk to the outside world — package repositories, container registries, external APIs. Opening the floodgates is dangerous. Routing everything through a secure proxy inside the VPC is the way forward.
A CI/CD deployment inside a VPC private subnet faces two main challenges: isolation and dependency resolution. Isolation keeps bad actors out, but it also keeps essential services out. Without egress management, builds stall, tests fail, and delivery slows. A well-placed proxy solves this by granting controlled outbound access, logging every request, and respecting network policy.
The most effective pattern is clear:
- Keep runners or build agents inside the private subnet.
- Route outbound traffic through a VPC proxy or NAT system.
- Enforce strict allowlists for repositories and registries.
- Automate proxy configuration during CI/CD job startup.
A deployment architecture like this keeps compliance happy, reduces attack surface, and eliminates the awkward trade-off between security and velocity. CI/CD pipelines run as if they were in the open internet, but every connection is authorized and audited.
Performance matters too. Caching proxies inside the VPC speed up dependency installs. Artifacts do not need to be pulled from the public net every build. Latency drops. Build times shrink.
Security teams gain real visibility. Every external request passes through a single choke point. You can rotate credentials, enforce TLS, and block suspicious targets in one place. Audits become faster. Incidents become easier to investigate.
Deploying this without friction requires tooling that understands both networking and pipelines. You don’t want to babysit complex infra scripts or manually tweak routes for each runner. The setup should be reproducible, version-controlled, and work on day one.
There’s no reason to wrestle with months-long network rollouts. You can see a fully working CI/CD VPC private subnet proxy deployment in minutes with hoop.dev — spin it up, run your first build, and watch it just work.