# What is Pomerium
# Overview?
Pomerium is an identity-aware proxy that enables secure access to internal applications. Pomerium provides a standardized interface to add access control to applications regardless of whether the application itself has authorization or authentication baked-in. Pomerium gateways both internal and external requests, and can be used in situations where you'd typically reach for a VPN.
Pomerium can be used to:
- provide a single-sign-on gateway to internal applications.
- enforce dynamic access policy based on context, identity, and device identity.
- aggregate access logs and telemetry data.
- perform delegated user authorization for service-based authorization systems:
- add unified access and identity to custom, on-prem, and hosted apps and services (opens new window)
- serve as a VPN alternative.
Glossary →