After a surge in VPN utilization in the course of the pandemic, its appears there was a substantial drop within the variety of adopters, new analysis has claimed.
A study (opens in new tab) performed by Digital Intelligence Briefing (ViB) and sponsored by IT infrastructure agency DH2i, has checked out pre and put up pandemic ranges of VPN utilization, discovering a big current slowdown in VPN utilization progress.
Whereas 85% of respondents revealed that they used a VPN in 2020 in order that they might connect with their office’s inner personal community from their very own dwelling, this determine solely elevated by 2.4% for 2022.
Higher options?
DH2i co-founder and CEO Don Boxley famous that “Throughout 2020, the world skilled an unprecedented surge within the variety of folks working from dwelling, a development that has continued for a lot of to current day.”
Regardless of anticipating the latest analysis to point out VPN utilization rising in step with this new manner or working, the truth that it did not suggests to Boxley that “VPN distant person deployments could have reached a most saturation level.”
In trying additional into this, the survey discovered that there are quite a few points concerned with utilizing the privateness software that could be placing folks off. Earlier than the pandemic hit in 2020, VPN utilization was comparatively low and subsequently manageable.
Nevertheless, because the software’s reputation started to take off with the uptake of distant working, sure points began to current themselves, akin to these associated to the safety of VPNs, in addition to catastrophe restoration (DR) limitations, sluggish connection speeds, bandwidth constraints, configuration and general administration complexity, and price.
Because of these constraints, the most recent survey discovered that respondents had been trying into or already utilizing options to VPNs, specifically software-defined perimeter (SDP) options for distant employees. 18% have applied SDP since 2020, and an extra 39% are contemplating doing so throughout the subsequent six to 12 months.
Boxley defined that “conventional perimeter safety strategies like VPNs are struggling to maintain up with the more and more heterogeneous computing panorama,” including that “The essential fort moat performance of VPNs, whereas helpful prior to now, is now not adequate to guard organizations in in the present day’s advanced digital surroundings.”
Alternatively, “SDP’s Zero Belief community entry tunnels provide application-level segmentation and invisibility to untrusted entry, eliminating the chance of lateral community assaults which are frequent with VPNs and lowering the necessity for classy firewall insurance policies. This makes SDP the safer alternative for organizations trying to transfer operations throughout completely different clouds and safe IoT units.”