GigaOm Radar for Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA)v2.0

1. Summary

Secure remote access is a critical component of an organization’s ability to maintain business operations. Before COVID, many saw remote access as a perk offered to the staff to enable work from home, while others considered it a way to ensure timely responses to requests after hours. Now, however, secure remote access is as vital to business operations as almost any other technology.

Traditionally, virtual private networks (VPNs) have been the default method of achieving secure remote access. VPNs allow organizations to limit who can gain access to remote access protocols, such as Secure Socket Shell (SSH) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), rather than exposing internal systems’ remote access protocols to the internet where anyone can attempt a connection.

However, VPNs are limited in the level of control they can provide. They’re provisioned in a way that allows authorized users too much access to internal networks and resources, and they fail to take into consideration the context in which legitimate users are accessing resources over the VPN.

This is where zero-trust network access (ZTNA) offers several advantages over VPNs.

• ZTNA is built on the zero-trust model, meaning a system establishes a trusted relationship with a user every time a connection is requested rather than just establishing trust once and never reviewing it again.
• ZTNA considers both the user’s identity and the context of the connection request. This is a powerful capability that mitigates many risks inherent in using a VPN.

This GigaOm Radar report highlights key ZTNA vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report, “Key Criteria for Evaluating ZTNA Solutions,” we describe in more detail the key features and metrics that are used to evaluate vendors in this market.