My company still relies heavily on traditional VPNs for our remote employees, but our CTO wants us to move toward a "Zero Trust" model. I’m struggling to understand if Zero Trust means we ditch the VPN entirely, or if we just add more layers to it. How do we verify every device and user constantly without destroying the user experience for our staff who just want to access their email and files?
3 answers
Zero Trust is a philosophy of "never trust, always verify," and it typically means moving away from a "perimeter-based" security model where the VPN is the only gatekeeper. In a true Zero Trust setup, the VPN is often replaced or augmented by Software-Defined Perimeters (SDP). You should focus on Identity-Aware Proxies. Instead of giving a user access to the whole network via VPN, you give them access only to the specific applications they need. Every request is verified based on user identity, device health, and location. It’s a shift from "where you are" to "who you are."
Heather, for a smaller company with a limited budget, is it possible to achieve "Partial Zero Trust" using just MFA and strict conditional access policies in Azure AD?
We recently moved to ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) and our support tickets for "VPN connection issues" dropped by 40%. The users actually prefer it because it's seamless.
That's a huge benefit that often gets overlooked, Sean. Security that actually improves the user experience is the ultimate "win-man" for any IT department.
Brian, absolutely! You don't need a million-dollar budget to start. Implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and setting up "Conditional Access" policies—like requiring a managed device to access company data—is the foundation of Zero Trust. It’s all about removing the "implicit trust" that being on a VPN used to provide. Start small with identity verification and expand to device posture checks as you grow.