Before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, few organizations were using a work-from-home framework. Now, around 40% of the American workforce is working from home, heightening the use of VPN technology for remote access. DH2i commissioned Virtual Intelligence Briefing (ViB) to conduct a large study in early 2020 to better understand the state of VPNs.

The report uncovers the top challenges of VPNs that are driving the movement towards holistic Software Defined Perimeter solutions.

The survey findings revealed that universally, respondents advised that using a VPN created a number of problems for their organization. Topping the list, 62% of respondents cited inadequate security as their number one VPN pain point.

The goal of the research, conducted prior to the COVID-19 stay-at-home guidance, was to understand the challenges being faced by IT professionals charged with deploying and managing VPNs.

The Pre-Pandemic State of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) report highlights:

• The top three use cases: remote user access (83%), site-to-site connections (57%) and site-to-cloud and/or cloud-to-cloud connections (48%).
• The top three VPN vendors: CISCO (663%), Palo Alto Networks (22%) and Check Point (12%).
• The top five pain points: security (62%), performance (45%), cost (46%), manageability (44%) and reliability for DR (48%).
• The most surprising finding: Almost 40% of respondents believed their network had already been breached by a bad actor(s).

The next phase of this research, already underway, will examine how today’s work from home (WFH) paradigm has shifted the data security and VPN landscape.