ZTA vs ZTAA vs ZTNA: Understanding the Difference
Ever since the global pandemic and the remote working environment, the importance and need for secure remote network access have increased than ever before. According to research, data breaches and cybercrimes are up by 600% since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Online and cybersecurity attacks spare no website or network—big or small. Even today, in 2022, most of the businesses are operating remotely. Hence, you need to implement a robust security model to ensure the utmost data security and protect your network against the increasing risks of online attacks and cyber thefts.
The cloud-based assets and Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) lack the enterprise-level network boundary and security perimeter—that’s where a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) comes into play.
A Zero Trust Model is a security solution that provides your remote teams, employees, and contractors with secure remote network access.
The Zero Trust Application security architecture has many security models—including ZTA, ZTNA, and ZTAA. In this article, we’ll see how these security models differ from each other and which one you should opt for your network. Let’s start with understanding each of these models.
Understanding ZTA
The Zero Trust Access (ZTA) is a security model that offers an end-to-end zero-trust across all systems, data centers, applications, and networks.
It’s solely and completely based on identity-based access—only allowing an appropriate level of access after knowing and identifying who the user is. It encompasses both ZTA and ZTNA but offers pure Zero Trust solutions.
Understanding ZTNA
The Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is one of the most popular and widely used models and implementation of the ZTA architecture.
The ZTNA architecture provides users access to network systems and assets only after proper authentication and verification.
Furthermore, it’s based on the isolation and micro-segmentation of the networks. As a result, it’s an excellent VPN replacement—allowing users to access different devices and locations from any remote location without having to depend on the corporate networks.
ZTNA is an outstanding solution for IT managers—providing a quick and easy solution for their employees.
Understanding ZTAA
While the ZTNA model provides secure access to the network and leaves applications vulnerable—the Zero Trust Application Access (ZTAA) model provides secure application access.
ZTAA assumes that all the networks are compromised and only offers access to applications after device and user authentication. Hence, ZTAA only provides application access to trusted or authorised users—providing granular visibility of each user activity.
ZTAA vs ZTNA vs ZTA
Out of the three solutions, if you wish to ensure a secure application and network access for your remote employees, we recommend you opt for the Zero Trust Application Access (ZTAA) security model.
The traditional remote security solutions allow an untrusted user access to your applications —exposing a large attack surface and greater risk of data exploitation.
On the other hand, ZTAA:
- Provides better control over the offering and limits user access to critical data and applications.
- Provides better visibility of the user activity on the network across the entire organisation.
- Provides advanced authentication solutions and capabilities to make authentication more secure, seamless, and integrated.
- Provides access to only authorised users.
Conclusion
The shift in the network architecture of the organisations requires the adoption of robust and quick network security solutions and replacing the traditional VPNs that offer network access to everyone, pose greater security attack risks, and provide a poor user experience.
At Instasafe, we provide true and secure Instasafe Zero Trust security solutions for your systems, applications, and networks with a single click unified access to applications and SSH/RDP servers hosted anywhere in the world.
Our ZTAA solution blackens your IT infrastructure providing granular user activity visibility and easy scalability as you grow. So, check out our services and get in touch with us to ensure guaranteed network and application security across your organisation.