BeyondCorp Remote Access: Google Is Eliminating Traditional VPN For Many

BeyondCorp Remote Access (something Google built for internal use about a decade ago) which allows users to access an organisation’s resources without a VPN service has been released. Now that’s not so good news for public VPN service providers.

This is in response to the number of people who have had to work remotely due to the Coronavirus global pandemic and this is just one of the few services Google is wither upgrading or rolling out to meet the demand of the season. 

This Cloud based security tool is based on zero-trust networking. Zero-trust network access information security framework which states that organizations should not trust any entity inside or outside of their perimeter at any time. It provides the visibility and IT controls needed to secure, manage and monitor every device, user, app and network being used to access business data. It also involves on-device detection and remediation of threats as per Wikipedia.

With BeyondCorp Remote Access, a business’ representatives and broadened workforce can get to its internal applications from for all intents and purposes any gadget whenever without a customary VPN. Goole plans to make this available for just about any application in the near future.

The release of the BeyondCorp Remote Access according to Google will bring the following benefits;

• Increased workers productivity
• Deploy applications quicker
• Improved control over your applications and resources
• Lower costs of deployment by offloading management tasks to the cloud
• Avoid disruptions by keeping your internal web apps wherever they are already hosted, on-premises or on another cloud.

This makes security even simpler by delegating most of the work to the cloud service. Traditional VPNs are difficult and expensive to deploy a times especially when it is a big organisation with a lot of users. VPNs are complex in nature from acquisition to deployment and eventually usage. This is what Google wants to achieve and let’s face it, Google has had a great internal success using he solution in the last decade, who wouldn’t want to give this a try.

Like I mentioned earlier, this is not a new solution. Google rolled this out back in 2011 to allow its users access to its internal applications even from any device on untrusted networks. It goes beyond replacing traditional VPNs according to Google Cloud’s Sunil Potti and Sampath Srinivas who painted a perfect remote work scenario in a blog post;

“My contract HR recruiters working from home on their own laptops can access our web-based document management system (and nothing else), but only if they are using the latest version of the OS, and are using phishing-resistant authentication like security keys.” Or: “My timecard application should be safely available to all hourly employees on any device, anywhere.”

But some don’t trust big tech and Google knows this which is why they say

With BeyondCorp Remote Access, we can help you do this in days rather than the months that it might take to roll out a traditional VPN solution, whether your applications are hosted in the cloud or deployed in your datacenter. We are collaborating with Deloitte’s industry-leading cyber practice to deliver end-to-end architecture, design, and deployment services to support your zero-trust journey. 

A traditional VPN solution can take time to set up but Google says with its solution, this time can be cut tom just a matter of days as the bulk of the setup is being done by its cloud platform.

Interested business can sign up to Google’s BeyondCorp Remote Access here