VPN or Zero Trust: rethinking remote access for your business

For years the answer to 'how do staff work from home' was simple: install a VPN. It builds an encrypted tunnel from a laptop to the office network, and once connected, the laptop behaves as if it were sitting at a desk inside the building. That model served small businesses well for a long time. The problem is that the very thing which makes a VPN convenient, dropping a remote user onto the internal network, is now one of its biggest weaknesses, and attackers have noticed. Zero Trust access is the alternative you will increasingly be offered. Here is what actually differs, in terms a business owner can use rather than the marketing version.

What a VPN Actually Does

A VPN, short for virtual private network, creates a private, encrypted connection across the public internet. Your employee connects to a VPN gateway, usually built into your firewall, proves who they are, and from then on their laptop is treated as part of the office network. They can reach the file server, the accounting system, whatever lives inside. The encryption is genuinely useful, and for a long time the trade-off was worth it. The catch hides in that phrase 'part of the office network'. The VPN grants broad access to everything inside, and it does so through a gateway that must sit exposed to the internet so people can reach it from outside.

Why VPNs Became a Target

A VPN gateway has to be reachable from the internet by design, which makes it a permanent, visible door with your whole company behind it. Over the last few years these gateways have become a favourite target. Flaws in widely used VPN products keep getting discovered, and attackers move fast: security agencies have noted that serious remote-access vulnerabilities are often exploited within a couple of weeks of going public, which is quicker than many small businesses patch. Worse, once an attacker is through the VPN, they are inside your network with the same broad reach your employee had. A stolen password with no MFA, or an unpatched gateway, can hand over the whole office. None of this makes VPNs useless. It means an internet-facing VPN that is not patched promptly and protected with strong MFA is a real liability, and that is exactly the state a lot of small-business VPNs are quietly in.

What Zero Trust Access Changes

Zero Trust Network Access, usually shortened to ZTNA, starts from a different assumption: trust nothing automatically, verify every request, and grant only the access actually needed. In practice, instead of placing a remote user onto the whole network, ZTNA connects them only to the specific applications they are allowed to use, and only after checking who they are and, often, whether their device is healthy and up to date. An accountant gets the accounting system and nothing else. The internal applications are not exposed to the open internet the way a VPN gateway is; they sit behind a broker that makes a connection only after the user and device pass the checks. If one account is compromised, the attacker reaches one application, not the entire office.

A Simple Way to Picture the Difference

Think of a VPN as a key to the building's front door. Once you are in, you can walk down any corridor and try any handle. ZTNA is more like a hotel keycard that opens only your own room and the gym, is checked each time, and works only while your booking is valid. For a business, that shift from 'inside the network' to 'allowed to use this one app' is the whole point. It limits how far any single mistake or stolen login can travel, which is the difference between an incident contained to one system and an incident that spreads across the company.

Does Your Business Actually Need ZTNA?

Not every small business needs to rush. If you have a handful of staff, a single office, and almost everything already running in Microsoft 365 or other cloud services, your most important remote-access controls are MFA and Conditional Access on those cloud accounts, not a new access product. ZTNA earns its place when you have internal systems people need to reach from outside, several locations or outside contractors, sensitive data where you need to prove who can reach it, or simply an ageing VPN that is hard to keep patched. For many Israeli SMBs the honest answer is a mix: cloud apps secured with strong MFA, and ZTNA in front of the few internal systems that used to justify the VPN.

The Good News: You May Already Own It

This does not have to mean buying a whole new platform. Both FortiGate and Check Point, the two firewalls most common in Israeli small businesses, include ZTNA capabilities alongside their traditional VPN, often without a separate licence cost. If you already run one of them, moving toward Zero Trust access can be a configuration project rather than a new purchase. That is worth knowing before anyone tries to sell you a standalone product on top of the firewall you already have. The real work is in designing the access rules properly and rolling them out without disrupting people, not in the hardware.

Doing It Without Disrupting Everyone

A move from VPN to Zero Trust is a project, not a switch you flip on a Friday. Map out who needs to reach what, set up access to those specific applications, test it with a small group, and run it alongside the existing VPN before retiring the old setup. Rushed, you either lock people out of tools they need or leave both doors open at once. Done deliberately, staff often barely notice the change beyond logging in to apps that simply work, while the exposed gateway they never knew was a risk quietly goes away in the background.

If You Are Staying on a VPN for Now

There is no shame in keeping a VPN, and for a small single-office business it can be entirely reasonable. If that is you, a few things stop being optional. Enforce MFA on every VPN login, with no exceptions for anyone. Patch the VPN gateway and firewall firmware quickly when updates appear, because this is the device attackers probe most. Remove accounts for people who have left. And never, as a 'simple' alternative, leave Remote Desktop open to the internet; it is one of the most exploited entry points there is. A well-run VPN is fine. A forgotten one is a standing invitation.

What It Costs and How Long It Takes

Owners reasonably want a sense of scale before committing. Hardening an existing VPN is usually the quickest win: enforcing MFA, applying outstanding firmware updates, and clearing out stale accounts can often be done in a short, planned maintenance window. Introducing Zero Trust access is a larger piece of work, measured in a few weeks rather than months for a typical small business, because the time goes into mapping who needs which applications and testing carefully before the cutover. Neither has to be a single big change. The sensible pattern is to fix the urgent risks on your current VPN first, then phase in ZTNA for the systems that need it, so your security improves at each step rather than waiting on one large project to finish.

Where remote access fits your wider security

Remote access is one piece of a bigger picture that also includes your firewall, your endpoints, and your backups, and the right answer depends on how your business actually works rather than on which acronym is in fashion. NetFortress designs and manages secure remote access for Israeli SMBs on both FortiGate and Check Point, whether that means hardening the VPN you already have or moving you to Zero Trust access at a sensible pace. If you are not sure whether your current setup is convenient-but-exposed or genuinely safe, ask us for a review and we will give you a straight answer.