zrok/docs/core-features/sharing-private.md

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Shares - Private

zrok was built to share and access digital resources. A private share allows a resource to be shared through a privately available endpoint. Sharing a resource with private is a differentiating feature of zrok.

Peer to Peer

A private share will require zrok to access the share and will also require a special shared secret token. This access token, combined with the zrok access command will be how the private share is accessed.

Sharing something with private is similar to sharing something publicly. The main difference is obvious, the shared resource is private and the share is not open to the public. With zrok, you can share resources on a private network without needing to expose the service to the internet. The share is not through an obfuscated, difficult to guess url. Instead the sharing is accomplished using a secure, zero trust overlay network provided by OpenZiti. With this private, peer to peer sharing model, there will never an attack surface available to the open internet.

The shared resource can be a development web server to share with friends and colleagues or perhaps, it could be a webhook from a server running in the cloud which has zrok running and has been instructed to access the private resource. What matters is that the access to the shared resource should not be done in a public way, for more secure access.

Using private shares is easy and is accomplished using the zrok share private command. Run zrok share private to see the usage output and to further learn how to use the command.

Unlike public shares, private shares do not need to be reserved to be predictable. When sharing a resource with private, the resource is shared at a known location. Resources shared with private do not need to be reserved.