Adoption numbers appear to have dropped significantly after VPN use surged during the pandemic, a new study claims.
the study (opens in new tab) A study conducted by Virtual Intelligence Briefing (ViB) and sponsored by IT infrastructure firm DH2i examined VPN usage levels before and after the pandemic and found that recent growth in VPN usage has slowed significantly.
Eighty-five percent of respondents revealed they used a VPN in 2020 so they could connect to their internal private network at work from home, but this number will only increase by 2.4 percent in 2022.
What’s a better alternative? DH2i co-founder and CEO Don Boxley said, “2020 saw an unprecedented surge in the number of people working from home globally. This trend continues for many to this day. ‘ said.
A recent study predicted that the use of VPNs would grow in line with this new method and functionality, but found that “the deployment of VPN remote users may have reached a maximum saturation point.” Mr. Boxley did not suggest.
Looking further into this, the study found that there are many issues associated with using privacy tools that can put people off. Before the 2020 pandemic, VPN usage was relatively low and easy to manage.
However, as remote work became more prevalent and the tools began to grow in popularity, certain problems arose, such as issues related to VPN security, limited disaster recovery (DR), slow connection speeds, and bandwidth constraints. started. , configuration and overall management complexity, and cost.
Due to these constraints, a recent survey found that respondents are considering or already using VPN alternatives, especially software-defined perimeter (SDP) solutions for remote workers. 18% have implemented their SDP since 2020, and another 39% are considering implementing it in the next 6-12 months.
“Traditional perimeter security methods like VPNs struggle to keep up with increasingly heterogeneous computing environments,” Boxley explains, noting that “the basic castle-and-moat functionality of VPNs has was useful, but is no longer sufficient to protect today’s complex organizations.” digital environment. ”
On the other hand, “SDP’s Zero Trust Network Access Tunnel provides application-level segmentation and visibility into untrusted access, eliminates the risk of lateral network attacks common in VPNs, and eliminates the need for complex firewall policies. This makes SDP a more secure option for organizations looking to move operations between different clouds and protect IoT devices.”
