Choosing the Ultimate Private Access Solution: VPN, ZTNA, or Beyond
- June 4, 2024
Summary: In today’s fast-paced digital world, keeping your private infrastructure secure and accessible is crucial. Old-school methods like legacy VPNs and traditional Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) come with their own set of problems and vulnerabilities. In this blog, we’ll dive into the design principles and considerations for modern private infrastructure access to keep up with ever-evolving threats.
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Why Legacy Solutions Fall Short
Legacy VPNs
- Vulnerabilities: Legacy VPNs are prone to CVEs, making them easy targets for hackers.
- Patch Cycles:Slow patch cycles can leave your systems exposed for too long.
- Scalability and Performance: As you scale, performance often drops.
- Always-On: Constant connections can lead to unnecessary exposure and potential security risks.
- User Authentication: Older methods may not be strong enough to prevent unauthorized access.
Legacy ZTNA
- Privacy Concerns: Third-party apps and APIs can pose big privacy risks.
- Performance Issues:Tunneling and encryption processes can slow things down.
- Partner Connectivity: Managing IP whitelisting for partners is cumbersome and error prone.
- Third-Party Infrastructure: Security concerns around shared infrastructure tenancy and IP address blocks.
- Offline Security:Ensuring security when devices are offline is a significant challenge.
- Tunneling:Tunneling can introduce significant latency and potential security vulnerabilities.
- Increased Attack Surface: Increased exposure to third-party security providers and their interdependence on other third parties can expand the attack surface, making the system more vulnerable to breaches.
Modern Solutions: Security and Privacy by Design
A modern approach to private infrastructure access needs to address the limitations of legacy systems. To overcome these challenges, any new approach should integrate Security and Privacy by Design (SPbD) principles:
Key Features and Benefits
Just-in-Time Access:
- Dynamic Access: Access is granted only when needed, reducing the attack surface.
- Minimized Exposure:By limiting the duration of access, the risk of unauthorized access is significantly reduced.
End-to-End Encryption:
- Data Security: All data is encrypted from end to end, ensuring that sensitive information remains secure.
- Privacy Protection: Corporations retain full control over their data, mitigating privacy concerns associated with third-party applications and APIs.
Authenticated Device & User Activity:
- Risk-Aware Authentication: Access is granted based on the risk profile of both the device and user activity.
- Enhanced Security: This approach ensures that only trusted devices and users can access the infrastructure.
Ownership of Data Plane:
- Visibility and Control: Customers maintain full control over their data plane, ensuring privacy and security, and eliminating third-party risks.
- Minimized Third-Party Risks: Reduces visibility, control, and risks associated with third-party APIs, apps, and security providers.
Get your own private key for data Encryption
Using your own private key for data encryption protects your organization from potential compromises in the service provider’s backend systems.
By maintaining exclusive control over the encryption and decryption processes, you ensure that even if the provider’s infrastructure is breached, your encrypted data remains secure and inaccessible to unauthorized entities.
This approach significantly reduces the risk of data breaches and enhances your overall security posture.
By maintaining exclusive control over the encryption and decryption processes, you ensure that even if the provider’s infrastructure is breached, your encrypted data remains secure and inaccessible to unauthorized entities.
This approach significantly reduces the risk of data breaches and enhances your overall security posture.
Considerations for Self-Hosted vs. SaaS VPN Services
When deciding between self-hosted and SaaS VPN services, it’s crucial to weigh the benefits and risks associated with each option.
Self-Hosted VPN:
- Control and Security: Self-hosted VPNs eliminate many unknowns, such as third-party risks, which are increasingly problematic. By managing your own VPN, you have complete control over your data and security protocols.
- Customization: You can tailor the VPN to meet specific needs and integrate it seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.
- Management: This requires a user friendly SaaS portal to manage the configurations without requiring training or professional services
SaaS VPN:
- Third-Party Risks: When opting for any SaaS service providers including VPN providers, consider lessons learnt from breaches involving companies like Okta, Microsoft, Cisco DUO, Snowflake to name a few, such as response times, transparency in investigation.
- Provider Dependencies: While not all of provider’s 3rd party App or API dependencies can be controlled begin with visibility into runtime inventory.
- Certifications and Assessments: While certifications and third-party risk assessment scores are valuable, they may not fully address all potential “what-if” scenarios. Ensure the provider has robust contingency plans and risk mitigation strategies in place.
Proactive not Reactive; Preventative not Remedial
Implement proactive measures to anticipate and prevent security and privacy-invasive events before they occur.
Security and Privacy as the Default Setting
Ensure that security and privacy are the default settings, protecting corporate data automatically without requiring user intervention.
Full Functionality – Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
Accommodate all legitimate interests and objectives in a positive-sum manner, avoiding unnecessary trade-offs between security, privacy, and other functionalities.
End-to-End Security – Lifecycle Protection
Ensure strong security measures are in place throughout the entire lifecycle of the data, from collection to secure destruction.
Visibility and Transparency
Maintain visibility and transparency in all business practices and technologies, ensuring accountability and trust.
By carefully considering these factors, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your organization’s security needs and operational capabilities.
Conclusion
Modern private infrastructure access requires a shift from traditional systems to more secure, efficient, and privacy-conscious solutions. By implementing just-in-time access, end-to-end encryption, and risk-aware authentication, organizations can ensure robust security and privacy for their private infrastructure. This approach eliminates the vulnerabilities and limitations of traditional methods.
Incorporating Security and Privacy by Design principles further enhances the security and privacy of your systems, ensuring a holistic and proactive approach to data protection. Embrace the future of private access with these modern solutions and secure your infrastructure against evolving threats.
With over a decade of experience steering cybersecurity initiatives, my core competencies lie in network architecture and security, essential in today's digital landscape. At Kitecyber, our mission resonates with my quest to tackle first-order cybersecurity challenges. My commitment to innovation and excellence, coupled with a strategic mindset, empowers our team to safeguard our industry's future against emerging threats.Since co-founding Kitecyber, my focus has been on assembling a team of adept security researchers to address critical vulnerabilities and enhance our network and user security measures. Utilizing my expertise in the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) and Cybersecurity, we've championed the development of robust solutions to strengthen cyber defenses and operations.
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