Although organizations around the world relied on VPN services to allow their employees to work from home during the pandemic, a new startup called BlastWave believes that software-defined perimeter (SDP) solutions provide far less risk to businesses.
As part of its efforts to dethrone VPNs, the company has partnered with Knight Ink which is a full-service digital brand, content and experience agency for challenger brands in cybersecurity. Together, the two have released a new whitepaper that presents a new approach to secure remote access which does away with VPNs in favor of SDP to prevent Account Take Over (ATO).
The whitepaper, titled “The Valley of Kings: SPD Rising and The Fall of VPNs”, explains how organizations relied on VPNs and remote desktop software during the pandemic as they were the only options available at the time.
SPD over VPN
According to a recent survey from BlastWave, 93 percent of organizations surveyed have deployed some sort of VPN though 94 percent of respondents are aware of the fact that VPNs are a popular target for cybercriminals. At the same time, the survey also revealed that 67 percent of businesses are looking at alternatives to traditional VPNs for remote access.
Unlike with a VPN, software-defined microsegmentation allows organizations to create communities of assets and people that define who and what can talk to each other in a network. Thanks to its foundation in zero-trust security, SDP obviates the idea that we should trust users, the assets they're using and the data they're trying to access.
BlastWave's SDP solution BlastShield integrates three innovative products that combine infrastructure, cloaking and passwordless multi-factor authentication (MFA) for identity-based secure remote network access for businesses that have adopted a zero-trust security model. The company's SDP solution also allows organizations to hide on-premises and cloud workloads from both outsider and insider threats by concealing their infrastructure from cyberattacks through software-defined microsegmentation.
When compared to traditional VPNs, BlastWave applies a zero-trust software-defined perimeter through an organization's network architecture (not just at the endpoint) in order to render the entire network invisible.
We'll have to wait and see as to whether or not organizations give up their business VPNs in favor of BlastWave's SDP solution but the company's partnership with Knight Ink aims to develop whitepapers, videos and episodic short films to demonstrate why organizations should move to zero-trust network access (ZTNA) powered by its BlastShield offering.
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