

The sudden shift to work-from-home during pandemic shortages made BYOD essential. But then bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies gained traction. This began to change as company-owned laptops and then smartphones made employees more mobile. Security was much easier when on-premises managed devices were the only things accessing the network.

Modern remote access security systems must be able to handle this varied nature of today’s workforce and the near-universal need for remote access. As the pandemic eased, employees and employers alike questioned the need to go back to the office. While hybrid workforces existed before 2020, the COVID pandemic forced all businesses to adopt work-from-home policies.

Companies today rely on blended workforces of employees, on-demand freelancers, short-term and long-term contractors, as well as 3rd party service providers. Most users were employees working at their desks and a relative few traveling employees who needed remote access.Ģ1st Century computing is completely different. The distinction between those who could be trusted and everyone else was easy. In the 20th Century, network perimeters existed neatly within the office walls. Our traditional network defenses share a similar fate. Of course, medieval defenses eventually fell as cultures changed and military technologies breached walls with ease. Often compared to the way moats and walls protected medieval castles, the layered defenses of the secure perimeter supplied a safe haven for an organization’s most critical systems. VPN, RDP, and other remote access technologies open secure, encrypted portals through this perimeter so traveling employees can access company resources. Traditional systems rely on the creation of a secure perimeter around trusted, managed networks and devices. ZTNA’s assumption that nothing can be inherently trusted overturns decades of network security practice. You never assume that the incoming access request from your CEO is actually coming from your CEO. You never assume that a user’s laptop is any more secure than anything rack-mounted in your server room. Under Zero Trust, you never assume that an on-premises network is any safer than the public internet. Also called Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) this new framework is based on one fundamental assumption: Zero Trust (ZT) is an approach to network security and access control that meets the challenges of 21st Century cybersecurity. Despite its early reputation, Zero Trust can be simple enough to deploy without re-architecting your entire network. We will give you some tips for evaluating Zero Trust providers and dispel the myths holding back Zero Trust adoption.

Traditional access control technologies have an inherent design flaw: they require an assumption of trust. This 21st Century approach to remote access security promises to fix many of the cybersecurity and network management challenges faced by organizations of all sizes. If there were any doubts that Zero Trust Network Access is more than a buzzword, they were erased by the US government’s decision to adopt Zero Trust across all federal agencies.
