A white paper produced for Systancia reveals that zero-trust (“ZTNA”) technology is better suited than VPN to meet teleworking challenges

Paris, September 29, 2020 – Systancia, the European software vendor of cybersecurity and application virtualization solutions, and the research company IDC, have published a white paper comparing VPNVirtual Private Network. VPN is a technology that simulates a local area network between two trusted networks. In practice this allows two elements (workstations, servers, printers, etc.) to communicate with... More and zero-trust (ZTNAZero Trust Network Access. The ZTNA is a name describing products that apply a "Zero Trust", or lesser privilege, policy in the area of external access. The objective is to... More) technologies to secure the data of companies dealing with the spread of teleworking and guarantee their business continuity.

The White Paper “Enabling a scalable and long-term strategy for secure remote access and teleworking in a post-covid-19 era” promotes the idea that the future of teleworking should be based on the use of ZTNA technology.

Realizing that teleworking challenges still need to be addressed

This study is based on a global survey conducted by IDC in April 2020, “COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey“. This study revealed that 47% of the organizations surveyed believed there would be an increase in demand for secure remote access linked to COVID-19 and the need for new technology and changes to their organization’s working model.

Another IDC European survey which examined spending in Europe – “Impact of COVID-19 on the European ICT Market and Ecosystem” (March 2020) – showed that collaboration technologies (+57%) and security (+16%) were the top two IT areas where organizations expected to see growth in 2020.

“In the current context, when it is absolutely necessary to have the most secure teleworking solutions, we felt that there was a need on the market for an independent analysis on the subject. This will allow decision-makers to more easily understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches and thus to choose the best strategy for secure access to the work environment“, explains Christophe Corne, Chairman of Systancia’s Management Board.

VPN not suitable for mass teleworking

According to the White Paper produced for Systancia, VPN solutions are not suitable for large-scale teleworking. During the lockdown, many employees had to work from home and many had to use their personal computers. Many companies have been deploying VPNs on their employees’ devices. Since these are not secure – or “trusted”, opening a VPN connection from an untrusted device can jeopardize the data on the corporate network.

Extending the VPN access to the entire workforce has also led to additional costs, performance and device compatibility issues. Moreover, with a VPN, the audit and monitoring – to understand who has access to what – is not possible and represents an identity and access management issue.

ZTNA, the only coordinated approach of people, processes and technologies

With the ZTNA, it becomes possible to verify the identity of users and characterize devices as “trusted” or not, before granting access to networks and applications from any location. The technology also ensures that users and devices are protected against attacks such as phishing and other threats, without requiring software or applications to be up to date.

The ZTNA is the only technology tool that can preserve security, usability and user experience. There are few solutions that can do all of this at once, hence the ZTNA’s unsuspected potential. Indeed, this technology is:

• Intuitive, it offers the same user experience as in the office (same work environment, without any lag or access problems due to slow networks or hardware), with the same level of security.
• Scalable, it allows to manage a small number of teleworkers as well as the transition of all employees to mass teleworking.
• Agile, the ZTNA uses the cloud to give IT and security teams the agility they need to facilitate IT processes.
• Less expensive, the ZTNA eliminates the need for expensive, complicated, and non-scalable VPN solutions.

“With a significant number of employees now working remotely, companies can improve the productivity of their staff by providing them with the same work environment as at the office, with the same performance and user experience, in complete security. Choosing a Zero Trust Network Access (“ZTNA”) architecture for remote access eliminates the need for expensive VPNs, helps secure multi-cloud access and reduces risks to third parties by ensuring that external users only have access to relevant applications, all managed through the cloud,” said Romain Fouchereau, Research Manager European Security at IDC.