PODCAST: Bringing Zero Trust Access to the Corporate LAN

As offices and corporate campuses re-open and organizations dust off LANs and reboot legacy NACs, it’s a good time to understand how to extend Zero Trust beyond remote access to secure network access across the entire IT ecosystem.

On this episode of the Zero Trust Thirty podcast, cybersecurity strategists Chris Scheels and Greg Shields discuss how Zero Trust security should be applied across the network to ensure secure Zero Trust access for all user-to-workload and workload-to-workload connections. Listen below to learn about:

• The network security challenges of securing LANs, and how they differ from remote access
• Insights from a new Gartner report about how campus network security and network access control (NAC) are ripe for market disruption
• End user struggles with connecting to corporate LANs and how Zero Trust Network Access can solve for those disruptions
• How security and networking teams can work together and reduce friction as they fulfill sometimes competing responsibilities

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How to bring Zero Trust security to the corporate LAN

When offices emptied during the pandemic, many corporate LANs went inactive until the return to the office and corporate campuses recently started gaining steam. Now security administrators face a possible step backward in their Zero Trust journey by having to dust off unpatched or outdated networking and security solutions that don’t adhere to the principles of Zero Trust.

Here are some thoughts from Chris and Greg on how organizations can advance their Zero Trust journey by moving beyond secure remote access to secure anywhere access:

• Say goodbye to NACs and their delays. Hardware switches for NACs are expensive and hard to acquire or upgrade due to supply chain delays, with lead times for network hardware averaging 200 – 450 days. Organizations can’t afford to wait that long, and ZTNA provides a better software-defined solution with better protection and simplified implementation.
• Improve user and admin experience with ZTNA. The right ZTNA solution can provide secure remote access and handle most of the tasks that a NAC performs for corporate LANs. By reducing the number of tools needed, you can improve the user experience, and administrators gain a unified policy engine that controls access whether a user is on-campus or remote.
• Reduce friction between security and network teams. These equally important team must both re-address processes for returning to campus. Even as LANs and WANs become less desirable, the networking team must still provide connectivity for any scenario. And the security team can overlay a robust, API-driven ZTNA solution that delivers Zero Trust least privilege access without tampering with the network. This simplifies the ecosystem and creates a hardened security posture across the board.
• Don’t forget about IoT. It’s not just about users and laptops connecting to the corporate LAN. There are Internet of Things (IoT) devices like card readers, cameras, IP phones and printers to account for as well in your Zero Trust journey. The right ZTNA solution will use a unified policy engine, so you don’t need to create different access controls for different devices connecting to your network.

Want to tune in to more Zero Trust Thirty podcast episodes? Listen and subscribe here. Or  sign up for our weekly Wednesday democast to see the power of Appgate SDP, an industry-leading Zero Trust access solution, in action.

Additional Zero Trust Network Access resources

eBook: Securing the Hybrid Enterprise
Extend Zero Trust to unprotected IoT devices
Webinar: Implementing a Zero Trust architecture
Register for a live demo