When the industry outgrew the perimeter, it also outgrew VPNs. Now, VPN replacements are in high demand as organizations look for scalable, lightweight ways to secure distributed data in a distributed workforce.
Understanding VPN and Its Limitations
VPNs were built for a bygone era, but fail to secure remote work, private data, or private applications today.
VPN Security Challenges
Securing VPNs is a challenge, as traditional VPNs are on-premises solutions that require a lot of upkeep. When assets are hosted in the cloud, multiple VPNs must be strung together and managed, creating complexity and additional work. Because they allow users to initiate sessions, they also expose a company’s data to unnecessary risk, and many do not encrypt data in transit.
In addition, VPNs are full of common vulnerabilities, requiring constant oversight and manual patching. Their static authentication measures (like MFA and passwords) are easily evaded, providing a protected, unseen space for attackers that manage to get inside.
As we’ve noted before, “Organizations leveraging legacy remote access solutions like VPNs do not have visibility of how data is shared and being accessed. With a lack of end-to-end visibility and granular data security, organizations cannot adequately prevent sensitive data from exfiltration.”
VPN Performance and Scalability Challenges
Not only is securing VPNs difficult to do, but they also cause performance issues and are hard to scale. Even though many companies rely on VPNs for remote work, user experience can suffer as VPNs can slow connections and cause latency for those working out of the office.
Another problem is the security versus expansion trade-off. Companies must be free to add as many devices as necessary, but with VPNs inspecting the traffic between each connection (and many in the cloud), the task can become burdensome and impact scalability.
These problems are especially acute for small organizations that need to grow securely yet lack a dedicated team that can devote time and effort to VPN optimization, troubleshooting, and patch management.
Finally, and most obviously, VPNs were built strictly to address “access” problems first (with security being an afterthought) and yet still require customers to pull in a multitude of other solutions to fully achieve zero-trust access across their services. In security, scope, and scalability, VPNs fall short.
Exploring Secure VPN Alternatives
For companies that need to get beyond the limitations of VPNs, the following VPN alternatives exist:
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
ZTNA enforces continuous validations across the entire data access journey, a step up from one-and-done VPN access. This allows companies to operate on the principle of least privilege and create specific policies for accessing each app, reducing the risk of lateral movement and providing safeguards at each step.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
While VPNs only provide a protected tunnel for traffic (and scale with difficulty), SASE offers unified, cloud-delivered threat protection that runs on ZTNA principles, provides seamless access and security to remote users, and scales with ease.
It combines a Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), a Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to augment on-premises resources and provide agile, uniform protection across both on-premises and cloud-based resources.
CSO Online lists several other popular VPN replacements, including a software-defined perimeter (SDF), software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs), identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM), secure web gateways (SWGs), and more.
Key Features to Look for in VPN Alternatives
When upgrading from a VPN, receiving additional security benefits is a given. The above solutions match or exceed VPNs in their ability to protect point-to-point connections and enhance online privacy. For that reason, additional business-centric features should be considered when choosing your VPN alternative, as these can be the differentiators.
Take every opportunity to simplify your workload with user-friendly management and reporting capabilities, look for integration with existing security architecture, and seek out solutions that are built to scale with your business.
Fortra’s VPN Replacement Solutions
Today, the trend is away from limited point solutions and toward simplified IT.
That means security solutions that go beyond one-time access and ensure future-proof, continuous authentication; and that means replacing clunky VPNs that don’t protect private apps with agile tools that create customized per-app policies. That also means cloud-based platforms that seamlessly secure remote work, no matter how much it grows or from where.
It also means an industry-standard line-up of Fortra VPN alternatives like:
- Fortra ZTNA
- Fortra SASE, through the Fortra platform
- Fortra SWG
- Fortra IAM
- Fortra CASB
Fortra offers a range of powerful VPN replacements that provide security, scalability, and a user-friendly experience to companies wanting to invest in more than an encrypted tunnel.
