The 2021 VPN Risk Report surveyed 357 cybersecurity professionals, providing insight into the current remote access environment, the state of VPN within the enterprise, the rise in VPN vulnerabilities, and the role that zero trust will play in enabling access to apps going forward.

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When requiring secure access to business applications, which group takes priority?

Employees

Customers

Contractors

Partners

When it comes to requiring secure access to business apps, employees take priority, unsurprisingly. Eighty percent of organizations are making employee access their first priority, followed by customers (14%), partners, and contractors (3% each).

Corporate device

BYOD

Combination of both

The majority of workers use Corporate devices but when asked about what type of devices remote workers are using to connect to business resources and apps, 45% of organizations report the allowed use of BYOD/personal devices. Being unable to enforce security measures on those BYOD devices makes device security and access control more challenging, especially in remote work scenarios.

Yes

No

Remote access adoption has increased significantly due to the unforeseen events of 2020. While our survey found that the vast majority of organizations are currently leveraging a VPN service for secure remote access (93%).

Yes

No

Seventy-two percent of companies said that they are concerned that VPN may jeopardize the ability to keep their IT environments secure. The question is raised to all IT, if your secure remote access solution doesn’t deliver the level of security desired, does your remote access strategy need to be adjusted?

None

1 to 2

3 to 4

5+

When asking respondents how many inbound VPN gateways they have globally, 41% of organizations state they have 3+ VPN gateways, with half of those companies reporting to have 5+ gateways. Each gateway requires a stack of appliances, often including the VPN (RAS), Internal Firewall, Internal Load balancer, Global Load balancer, DDoS, External Firewall, etc. The more gateways an organization has, the more expensive secure remote access becomes and the more complicated it is for IT to administer and manage each inbound stack.

Lack of visibility into user activity

High costs of security appliances/infrastructure

Giving employees and third-parties access to the corporate network

Poor user experience due to backhauls to VPN gateways

While many organizations have relied on VPN for secure remote access with the increasingly mobile workforce, it’s not without its pitfalls. When asked to rank the most significant challenges organizations face with their remote access solution, lack of visibility into user activity takes the top spot, followed by the high cost of security infrastructure.

Social engineering

Ransomware

Malware

DDoS attacks

While many organizations have relied on VPN for secure remote access with the increasingly mobile workforce, it’s not without its pitfalls. When asked to rank the most significant challenges organizations face with their remote access solution, lack of visibility into user activity takes the top spot, followed by the high cost of security infrastructure.

25%

42%

67%

89%

With nearly three out of four businesses concerned with VPN security, the majority of organizations (67%) are considering remote access alternatives to the traditional VPN.

17%

37%

72%

94%

The adoption of a zero trust strategy through Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and/or Zero Trust Architectures (ZTA) has/have rapidly gained traction in recent years. With the increase of mobile workers, zero trust adoption has become a priority for many organizations, with 72% of companies confirming their plans to adopt a zero trust model.

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