"65% Of Companies Are Considering Adopting VPN Alternatives"

Although there is widespread awareness of Virtual Private Network (VPN) risks, remote work forced many businesses to rely on legacy access methods during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Zscaler's VPN Risk Report, cybercriminals continue to exploit long-standing security flaws and increase attacks on VPNs. VPNs remain one of the weakest links in cybersecurity, as evidenced by several high-profile breaches and ransomware attacks. Their architectural flaws provide an entry point for threat actors, allowing them to move laterally and steal data, according to Deepen Desai, Global CISO of Zscaler. To protect against the evolving threat landscape, organizations must implement a zero trust architecture that, unlike VPN, prevents lateral movement through user-app segmentation, reduces the attack surface, and provides full Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection to prevent compromise and data loss. While more employees are returning to the office, 95 percent of surveyed workplaces still rely on VPNs to support a hybrid and distributed work environment that frequently spans multiple geographies. Large organizations often provide network access to other external stakeholders, such as customers, partners, and contractors, in addition to remote employees. In many cases, users who connect from untrusted devices on insecure networks are given more freedom than is necessary, and thus pose additional security risks. Zero trust architecture, as opposed to insecure VPNs, improves organizational security posture without sacrificing user experience. Furthermore, zero trust enables IT teams to conceal the location of their network and applications, lowering the attack surface and threat of Internet-based attacks. This article continues to discuss the risks posed by VPNs, the importance of considering a zero trust architecture, and VPN alternatives. 

Help Net Security reports "65% Of Companies Are Considering Adopting VPN Alternatives"