When Ivanti Connect Secure got hit with back-to-back zero-day exploit chains in early 2026, it was not just another vulnerability disclosure. It was a wake-up call that forced a lot of organizations to confront an uncomfortable question they had been avoiding for years. Is our VPN actually making us less secure?

The answer, for a growing number of businesses, turned out to be yes.

Ivanti was not the first VPN vendor to suffer critical vulnerabilities and it will not be the last. Fortinet, Palo Alto, Cisco, and Pulse Secure have all had their turns in the spotlight. The pattern is consistent. A critical flaw gets disclosed, exploitation begins within hours, and thousands of organizations discover that the technology they trusted to protect remote access was actually the thing that got them compromised.

If your organization still relies on a traditional VPN as its primary remote access solution, this guide is for you. We are going to walk through why VPNs have become a liability, what the alternatives actually look like in practice, and how to evaluate whether your current setup is protecting you or exposing you.

Why Traditional VPNs Keep Getting Exploited

The fundamental problem with traditional VPNs is architectural. A VPN concentrator sits on the edge of your network, exposed to the entire internet, running complex software that has to handle authentication, encryption, tunneling, and session management simultaneously. Every one of those functions is an attack surface.

When a vulnerability is found in a VPN appliance, the attacker does not need to be inside your network to exploit it. The VPN is literally designed to be reachable from anywhere in the world. That is its job. And when it fails, it fails catastrophically because a compromised VPN gives the attacker the same access your legitimate remote employees have.

The Ivanti zero-day chain we covered in February demonstrated this perfectly. Attackers chained two vulnerabilities together to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution on the VPN appliance itself. From there they had access to the internal network, credentials, and everything those credentials could reach.

This is not a problem unique to Ivanti. It is a problem inherent to the VPN model. You are trusting a single internet-facing appliance to be the gatekeeper for your entire internal network, and when that gatekeeper gets compromised, everything behind it is exposed.

The Alternatives That Are Actually Working

The security industry has been talking about VPN replacements for years, but the conversation has shifted from theoretical to practical. Organizations that got burned by VPN vulnerabilities are actually migrating now, and the options have matured significantly.

Zero Trust Network Access

ZTNA flips the VPN model on its head. Instead of giving authenticated users broad network access, ZTNA grants access to specific applications based on identity, device posture, and context. There is no network-level access at all. An authenticated user can reach the specific application they need and nothing else.

The key difference is that ZTNA brokers are not exposed to the internet the same way VPN concentrators are. The connection is outbound from behind the firewall, which means there is no internet-facing appliance for attackers to target. The attack surface shrinks dramatically.

Zscaler Private Access, Cloudflare Access, and Palo Alto Prisma Access are the most widely deployed ZTNA solutions in 2026. Each has tradeoffs in terms of performance, complexity, and cost, but all of them fundamentally reduce the risk that a single vulnerability gives an attacker the keys to your kingdom.

Software-Defined Perimeter

SDP takes a similar approach to ZTNA but with a stronger emphasis on making infrastructure completely invisible to unauthorized users. In an SDP architecture, resources are dark by default. They do not respond to connection attempts from anyone who has not been pre-authorized. You cannot attack what you cannot see.

This is particularly effective against the scanning and reconnaissance that precedes most VPN attacks. If your remote access infrastructure does not respond to unauthorized probes, attackers cannot discover it in the first place.

Identity-Aware Proxy

Google pioneered this approach with BeyondCorp, and it has since been adopted by organizations of all sizes. An identity-aware proxy sits in front of your applications and makes access decisions based on who is requesting access, what device they are using, and whether the request makes sense given the context.

The advantage is simplicity. Users access applications through a web browser with no client software required. The proxy handles authentication and authorization transparently. This works exceptionally well for web-based applications, which covers the majority of what most organizations need to access remotely.

What You Should Actually Do Right Now

Migrating away from VPNs is not something you do over a weekend. It is a phased transition that requires careful planning. Here is what we recommend for businesses evaluating their options.

Get a Baseline Assessment

Before you change anything, you need to know where you stand. A penetration test of your current VPN infrastructure will tell you exactly what an attacker could do if they found a vulnerability in your VPN tomorrow. This is not hypothetical. We regularly find that VPN configurations are more permissive than organizations realize, granting access to resources that remote users have no business reaching.

The pen test results give you a concrete risk baseline to justify the migration investment and prioritize what to protect first.

Inventory Your Remote Access Needs

Not every application needs the same level of remote access. Map out what your remote users actually need to reach. Web applications can often be fronted by an identity-aware proxy immediately. Legacy thick-client applications might need a different approach. Some things might still need a VPN temporarily, and that is fine as long as you understand the risk and scope it appropriately.

Start with Your Most Critical Applications

Move your most sensitive applications to ZTNA or SDP first. These are the ones where a VPN compromise would cause the most damage. Financial systems, HR platforms, customer databases, and administrative consoles should be at the top of the list.

Keep Monitoring Everything

Whichever solution you choose, visibility matters. A managed SOC service gives you continuous monitoring of remote access activity regardless of the technology stack. Our SOC analysts watch for anomalous login patterns, impossible travel scenarios, and credential abuse that would indicate a compromised remote access session.

The shift from VPN to ZTNA does not eliminate the need for monitoring. It changes what you monitor. Instead of watching VPN logs for unauthorized access, you are watching application-level access patterns for signs of compromise. The detection methodology evolves but the need for 24/7 human oversight does not go away.

Test Your New Setup Before You Trust It

Once you deploy a ZTNA or SDP solution, get it penetration tested before you rely on it. Configuration mistakes in ZTNA deployments are surprisingly common, and a misconfigured zero trust solution can be just as dangerous as the VPN it replaced. We see organizations deploy ZTNA with overly broad application access policies that effectively recreate the VPN model with extra steps.

A focused pen test of the new remote access architecture validates that the security improvements you expect are actually in place.

The Compliance Angle

If your organization operates under HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST, or SOC 2, your remote access architecture is part of your compliance posture. Auditors are increasingly asking about VPN security specifically because of the high-profile breaches. Being able to demonstrate that you have moved to a more secure architecture, or that you have compensating controls around your existing VPN, strengthens your compliance position.

Your compliance team should be involved in the remote access migration planning from the beginning. They can ensure the new architecture maps to the control requirements you need to satisfy.

Do Not Wait for the Next Zero-Day

The Ivanti situation was predictable. Not the specific vulnerability, but the pattern. VPN appliances will continue to be targeted because they are high-value, internet-facing, and complex. The next zero-day could be Ivanti again, or it could be the VPN vendor you currently trust.

Organizations that started their migration away from traditional VPNs after the Fortinet and Pulse Secure incidents in previous years were prepared when Ivanti happened. Organizations that waited were scrambling.

The question is not whether your VPN will have a critical vulnerability. The question is whether you will have an alternative in place when it does.

If you are not sure where your remote access security stands, start with an honest assessment. Our team helps businesses across Dallas, McKinney, and nationwide evaluate their VPN exposure and plan practical migration paths to more secure alternatives. A penetration test of your current remote access setup is the fastest way to understand your actual risk.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Innovation Network Design helps businesses across McKinney, Dallas, and the DFW metroplex — as well as organizations nationwide — with expert cybersecurity services. Contact us for a free consultation and we'll assess your needs with clear, actionable recommendations.

Have questions? Call us at 512-518-4408 or schedule a free assessment.

Secure Remote Access After Ivanti: VPN Alternatives and What Actually Works in 2026