The Evolution of Remote Access: Why Traditional VPNs Are No Longer Enough

In today’s hyper-connected world, the need for secure remote access has never been greater. Employees work from home, freelancers collaborate from coffee shops, and contractors log in from airports and hotels — all requiring access to corporate networks and sensitive data. For years, the default solution to enable remote access has been the Virtual Private Network, or VPN. But as technology, user expectations, and threat landscapes have evolved, traditional VPNs are increasingly not meeting the needs of organizations looking to keep connections secure.

What is a VPN?

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that creates an encrypted tunnel between a user’s device and a corporate network (or between two networks). This tunnel ensures that data transmitted over public internet connections cannot be easily intercepted by third parties, protecting sensitive corporate information.

VPNs have been a mainstay of corporate IT infrastructure for over two decades. By effectively masking the user’s IP address and encrypting their traffic, VPNs provide a basic level of security — essential when employees access internal systems from outside the office.

Why Businesses Use VPNs

VPNs gained popularity because they enabled simple, secure remote access. Employees could log into a VPN client and immediately gain access to corporate resources, including internal file servers, email systems, intranet portals, and custom applications that were hosted on-premises.

Some of the key reasons businesses turned to VPNs include:

1. Secure Access Over Public Networks

When employees connect from hotels, airports, or their homes, they’re often using insecure networks. VPNs encrypt traffic, offering protection against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.

2. Network-Level Access

VPNs don’t just grant access to a single application — they typically provide access to the entire corporate network. This was convenient for businesses with complex, interdependent internal systems.

3. Compliance Needs

Certain industries, such as healthcare and finance, have strict data security requirements. VPNs, once considered state-of-the-art, helped organizations comply with regulations like HIPAA and SOX.

4. On-Premises Infrastructure

In the early days of remote work, most critical systems were hosted on internal servers. VPNs provided the only practical way for off-site employees to reach these systems securely.

The Shortcomings of VPNs

While VPNs provided a reasonable solution in a simpler IT era, they struggle to meet the demands of today’s cloud-first, perimeter-less world. Here’s where traditional VPNs fall short:

1. Overly Broad Access

VPNs do not apply granular access controls. Once a user is authenticated, they typically have access to the entire corporate network, even if they only need one or two systems. This creates unnecessary exposure and increases the risk of lateral movement if credentials are compromised.

2. Performance Issues

VPNs introduce significant performance bottlenecks, especially when backhauling all traffic through corporate data centers. Remote users frequently complain about slow speeds, dropped connections, and inconsistent performance — all of which harm productivity.

3. Difficult Scalability

As remote work surged in 2020 and beyond, many organizations discovered their VPNs couldn’t scale to meet demand. Scaling VPN infrastructure requires provisioning additional servers, bandwidth, and licenses, driving up costs and administrative overhead.

4. Poor User Experience

VPN clients are notoriously clunky. Users must manually connect, deal with disruptions during network changes, and often re-authenticate if their session times out. This friction leads to workarounds (like employees saving work locally to avoid the hassle of reconnecting), undermining security efforts.

5. Limited Cloud and SaaS Support

Modern IT environments are no longer confined to corporate data centers. Critical applications now live in the cloud, and VPNs were not designed for secure, efficient access to SaaS platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, or Google Workspace. This leaves gaps in visibility and control.

ZTNA: A Modern Alternative

To meet today’s remote access challenges, organizations need solutions that go beyond VPNs. ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) solutions have emerged as a VPN alternative that covers the gaps left by this older technology.

What Makes ZTNA Different?

• Application-Specific Access: Rather than granting blanket access to the entire network, ZTNA only allows access to the specific applications and resources the user is authorized to access. This greatly reduces the attack surface.
• Built-in Zero Trust Controls: Every connection request is evaluated in real time, considering device posture, user identity, location, and risk factors before access is granted. This aligns with the modern Zero Trust security model, where trust is never assumed — even for internal users.
• Optimized for Cloud & Hybrid Environments: Whether applications live in the cloud, on-prem, or a mix of both, ZTNA can securely broker connections without forcing traffic through inefficient VPN tunnels.

Bonus Features:

Not every ZTNA solution has these, but the good ones do:

• Better User Experience via Passwordless Authentication: Users access resources via a seamless, passwordless connection thanks to digital certificate-based authentication. Eliminates the frustrations of forgotten passwords, disconnects, slow speeds, or dropped sessions that plague traditional VPNs.
• Cloud-native solutions: Bringing remote access to the cloud means not having to maintain, upgrade, and configure all the hardware associated with a traditional VPN or on-premise ZTNA solution.

Embracing the Future of Secure Access

VPNs had their moment, but they’re increasingly a liability rather than an asset in today’s fast-paced, cloud-first IT environment. Modern remote access solutions offer a more secure, scalable, and user-friendly approach — all while aligning with Zero Trust best practices.

If your organization is still relying on VPNs for remote access, it’s time to reconsider. Moving to cloud-native, application-specific remote access is not just a security improvement — it’s an operational upgrade that can reduce IT complexity and improve user satisfaction.