Security News > 2023 > August > VPNs remain a risky gamble for remote access

"The report shows 92% of survey respondents recognize the importance of adopting a zero trust architecture; however, it is concerning to see many organizations are still using a VPN for remote employee and third-party access, inadvertently providing a juicy attack surface for threat actors," said Deepen Desai, Global CISO and Head of Security Research, Zscaler.

"Legacy firewall and VPN vendors are spinning virtual VPNs in the cloud and claiming that it is zero trust, and they go the extra length to hide the word"VPN". Customers need to ask the right questions to make sure that they are not getting a false sense of security with these virtualized legacy offerings in the cloud. In order to safeguard against evolving ransomware attacks, it is critical for organizations to eliminate the use of VPNs, prioritize user-to-app segmentation, and implement an in-line contextual data loss prevention engine with full TLS inspection," added Desai.

More specifically, organizations are most concerned with possible phishing attacks and ransomware attacks due to regular VPN usage.

Ransomware, in particular, has emerged as a significant adversary for organizations, with 33% falling victim to ransomware attacks on VPNs within the past year.

Legacy networking and security architectures manage access to internal applications by providing users direct access to the network - inherently trusting users that can confirm their credentials at the access point, which is problematic if those credentials are stolen.

A resounding 92% recognize the importance of adopting a zero-trust approach to safeguard their assets and data - an increase of 12% year-over-year, and 69% are already in the planning stages of replacing their current VPN solutions with Zero Trust Network Access.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/08/04/vpns-security-risks/