Boost Connectivity & Security for Stay-at-Home Workers
- Eric Swanstrom
- • April 15, 2020
Zero Trust/Software Defined Perimeter
The way business gets done is different these days. First, over the last several years, most organizations have moved toward a cloud-centric or hybrid-cloud networking environment. Next – suddenly and globally – businesses now must meet the needs of an entirely remote workforce. These changes expose a few of the shortcomings of VPN, which has been, up until now, a reliable legacy technology. If your team is struggling to keep remote access secure and stable, consider upgrading to next generation VPN technology: identity-centric, perimeter-less Zero Trust network access. At Fastblue, we believe this is the best way to ensure secure, stable, and scalable networking for global enterprise.
Everyone at Home
With the outbreak of COVID-19, organizations have rapidly implemented a work from home strategy to protect their workers and prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. To support these at home workers, many organizations rely on VPN connections for remote access
But here’s the problem – VPN’s were not designed to provide constant connectivity to an entire enterprise of remote users.
New Challenges
Today’s demands push traditional VPN to its limits.
A VPN cannot handle today’s security threats, nor was it built to handle large-scale bandwidth needs. Faced with an exponential increase in connection requests, VPN’s struggle with functionality, and IT Administrators face challenging complexities.
Here are 3 examples:
- VPN connectivity requires constant user verification. The user will connect and authenticate the VPN ingress point.
Result: At a high level of utilization, this can cause the VPN to be overwhelmed as if it were facing a Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. - Infrastructure is the only way to scale. VPN’s were intended for small subsets of the corporate user base, like a sales team.
Result: To accommodate sudden work from home requirements, organizations add capacity by adding hardware. - VPN’s can be unstable. During a VPN transaction, if a TCP connection is lost, then the session will fail.
Result: As residential neighborhoods see an increase in traffic, local connections become more unstable, which can adversely impact TCP connections to the VPN.
Solution - Secure the perimeter
Protect your identity, not your IP Address
Zero Trust (Software Defined Perimeter) solves the problem of an unstable, overburdened VPN. Unlike a VPN, Zero Trust applications provide your users with a decentralized, “guilty until proven innocent” connection to your applications. Where a VPN has a centralized system that – once compromised – provides hackers with the ability to move laterally through your network, a Zero Trust network requires ID-based authentication. This allows a Zero Trust network to simultaneously create dynamic, one-to-one connections between multiple locations and the resources needed to support each remote user.
What enables the performance increase of Zero Trust?
- The control channel is separated from the data channel to reduce load.
- There are thousands of individual micro-firewalls instead of a single, centralized firewall engine.
- Zero Trust networks are scalable to accommodate thousands of users at once.
- It was created for a decentralized user base to support SaaS, on-premises, and UC applications.
- Real-time policy authentication protects your network by removing traffic from your firewall and creating individualized perimeters for each user.
Fastblue Recommendations
Based on our industry insights, here are our top recommendations for securely improving your network to handle remote users across the enterprise:
- AppGate: As one of the most mature players in the Zero Trust/Software Defined Perimeter market, AppGate has provided enterprises throughout the world with secure connectivity for their users. AppGate can be deployed in a few hours and can support thousands of users across SaaS, UC, and on-premises assets
- CATO: With an eye on global, mobile performance, CATO provides users with a Zero Trust service that connects directly to their SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Global Network. This provides the benefits of a Zero Trust Network and gives users private connectivity from their device to the SaaS application in use. Globally, users can use CATO’s private backhaul to connect between apps and regions.