Working from home (WFH) has become the new normal for many businesses around the world – and it’s easy to see why. Being able to draw from top talent across borders, reducing overheads from expensive office HQs, and boosting work-life balance for employees are undeniably great perks. However, this remote work revolution also brings a catalog of cybersecurity risks that could spell disaster for organizations that are unprepared.
As a business owner, you need to make sure your remote employees can access internal apps and data from wherever they are in the world, but you also need to make sure they are able to do that securely. Of course, this is a difficult challenge to overcome. But as always, there are tech solutions that can help, and one that is growing in popularity is Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).
A Quick Primer on Zero Trust Network Access
So, what is ZTNA, and how can it help you unlock remote productivity without compromising on security? Well, in its essence, ZTNA is a security framework that requires all users, whether in the office or working remotely, to verify their identity before granting access to applications and data.
Instead of automatically trusting people on your corporate network, ZTNA takes a “never trust, always verify” approach. This means that remote employees are only given access to the specific resources they need at any given time.
For example, when a remote employee logs into your cloud apps, ZTNA will prompt them to authenticate with strong credentials. It will then evaluate various risk factors behind the scenes, like user identity, device security posture, and geolocation. If everything checks out, it dynamically grants access to just those cloud apps. When the session ends, that access is immediately revoked.
Why Your Remote Security Model Needs ZTNA
Traditional VPNs have been widely adopted to allow remote work. Unfortunately, VPNs grant excessive network-level access that opens the door to lateral movement across your infrastructure if a device is compromised. Once a cybercriminal infiltrates your VPN, they have free rein to probe for vulnerabilities and exfiltrate sensitive data.
ZTNA effectively closes this remote work security gap by implementing the principle of least privilege access. Instead of the broad network-level access VPN provides, ZTNA only grants access to the specific resources and apps needed for an employee’s role. This minimizes your attack surface and reduces the impact of compromised employee devices.
At the same time, ZTNA doesn’t require remote users to be on your corporate network in order to gain access. By verifying identity first and allowing access second, employees can securely use cloud apps and resources over the public internet. This is great news for remote-first companies that want to give their employees the flexibility to work from public spaces such as cafes, airports, or any other place they can work from.
The Risks of Overly Permissive Access
To understand why ZTNA’s granular access is so critical for security, it helps to examine some examples of how remote work has increased risks for companies:
- Employees use personal devices more frequently when working from home. These devices are rarely secured to enterprise standards, making them attractive targets for attackers. Once compromised, overly permissive VPN access allows these threats direct access to corporate servers.
- Outdated legacy apps that don’t support modern authentication methods are particularly vulnerable to credential theft attacks. If stolen VPN credentials provide access to these legacy apps, it’s game over for your data security.
- Increased collaboration with third parties has become necessary to maintain business operations, further expanding your corporate attack surface. If partner access isn’t rigorously segmented from internal resources, then one compromised account can do serious damage.
As these examples illustrate, the extended corporate perimeter introduced by remote work creates all sorts of opportunities for attackers if broad network access is allowed. By implementing granular, temporary access policies, ZTNA effectively neutralizes these increased risks.
Unlocking Productivity with Frictionless Security
While ZTNA offers air-tight remote work security, it also needs to enable employee productivity. If security policies are overly rigid or frustrating, you’ll find workarounds and shadow IT popping up – destroying your data protection efforts.
That’s why intelligent ZTNA platforms apply contextual policies based on users’ roles, behaviors, locations, and devices. This balances strong identity-centric security with a streamlined user experience. As employees shift between office and home, devices, networks, and geographic regions, the right access is automatically applied to enable frictionless work. Modern ZTNA solutions also provide:
- Fast secure web access: Granular access policies are enforced in real-time proxied sessions without needing agent software on devices. Users can instantly and securely access web apps and tools.
- Easy endpoint onboarding: Adding and updating devices is simple with agentless visibility controls that don’t hamper endpoint functionality.
- Unified access management: Consistent access controls are maintained across your entire digital environment, encompassing legacy VPN-based apps and modern cloud-native apps. This simplifies remote security administration.
With intelligent context-aware access policies in place, employees can stay productive on any device, anywhere, without compromising security.
Transition Securely at Your Own Pace
Upgrading your remote access security is clearly a smart move to protect your organization. However, for many companies, VPNs have become deeply ingrained in IT environments over the years. Business-critical functions may rely on legacy VPN-based access, so change can feel daunting.
The good news is that modern ZTNA solutions allow you to phase out VPN gradually while scaling ZTNA at your own pace. With integrated ZTNA and VPN, you can selectively transition apps and resources over to a zero trust architecture over time. Critical legacy resources can be fortified with stronger identity and context-aware controls without overhauling everything at once.
This means you can tighten up remote access security for your highest risk apps immediately while executing a transition plan for the rest of your environment.
Final Word
In closing, the remote work genie is out of the bottle. While this shift has provided amazing flexibility and productivity gains, it has also massively expanded your corporate attack surface. Rather than relying on outdated legacy remote access, modern security frameworks like ZTNA allow you to embrace distributed workforces without increasing risk. With intelligent least privilege access baked in, you can empower employees to work productively and securely from any location.