How Cloudflare detects MCP traffic and helps secure it

This post introduces new Cloudflare One capabilities to detect and control Model Context Protocol (MCP) traffic generated by AI agents. It details the anatomy of an MCP tool call, highlighting key signals like hostnames, paths, authorization headers, and the MCP-Protocol-Version header. It explains three control points: inside the MCP client, at the network boundary (via Secure Web Gateway and TLS decryption), and before the MCP server invokes the tool. Cloudflare Gateway uses protocol signals to find 'shadow MCP traffic' and enforce MCP Portal-only access. The post also discusses the limitations of URL-based detection and the importance of the MCP-Protocol-Version header as a more specific indicator.