What Is Secure Remote Access?
Secure Remote Access is a catch-all term for the security technologies, processes, policies, and solutions intended to protect business assets from remote access by unauthorized parties. Beginning with virtual private networks (VPNs), Secure Remote Access solutions have been around for quite some time. They’ve unsurprisingly evolved a great deal over the years.
Yet for all that Secure Remote Access has changed, its core purpose remains the same—ensuring that only authorized parties can access your organization’s network, data, and resources.
Benefits of Secure Remote Access
The benefits of a strategic and comprehensive approach to Secure Remote Access include the following:
- Supporting remote work and hybrid work initiatives by allowing users to securely access the resources and systems they need to do their jobs from anywhere
- Improved security awareness and mindfulness through training, education, and clear access policies
- Enabling perimeter-less security focused more on endpoint protection than network protection
- Secure web access from anywhere, including locations that only offer public Wi-Fi
- Reduced likelihood of a malware or ransomware infection through containerization
- Greater, more centralized control over sensitive assets
How Secure Remote Access Works
2. Access Control and Least Privilege
3. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
4. Visibility
5. Education
6. Policy and Process
Types of Secure Remote Access
VPNs are the oldest and best-known type of Secure Remote Access tool. However, they’re also starting to show their age. How VPN technology works is relatively straightforward—it establishes a secure encrypted tunnel through which a user’s device can gain access to an organization’s network.
This technology was never intended to support the current scope of distributed work, and a VPN may struggle with performance issues at scale. VPN technology can also represent a security risk in and of itself, as any device connecting to a network through a VPN is automatically treated as trusted.