If you are currently evaluating your remote access strategy, you are likely caught in a frustrating bind. On one side, you have the legacy VPN, a technology that feels increasingly sluggish, difficult to manage, and surprisingly vulnerable.
On the other side, you hear the industry buzzing about “Zero Trust” and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), concepts that often sound incredibly expensive and complex to implement for a mid-sized organization.
You are looking for a practical bridge between the outdated “castle-and-moat” security of the past and a modern, flexible architecture that doesn’t require a Fortune 500 budget.
At SubIT, we help businesses handle this transition daily. We know that the goal isn’t just “security”, it’s frictionless connectivity that keeps your team productive without keeping your IT admins up at night.
The Death of the Legacy VPN (And Why It Matters)
For decades, the Virtual Private Network (VPN) was the gold standard. It operated on a simple premise: once a user authenticates, they are “inside” the network and trusted with broad access.
In 2025, this model is fundamentally broken.
The primary issue is “lateral movement.” If an attacker compromises a single employee’s laptop via a phishing email, a traditional VPN gives that attacker a tunnel straight into your internal network. From there, they can scan for servers, map your infrastructure, and deploy ransomware.
This is why the industry is shifting aggressively toward Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Unlike a VPN, which connects a user to a network, ZTNA connects a user to a specific application.
The Adoption Reality
The market is voting with its wallet. According to the 2024 Security Service Edge Report, 44% of organizations are starting their security edge journey with ZTNA, making it the highest-interest entry point for modernizing IT infrastructure.
However, the hesitation for many SMBs is implementation. Enterprise vendors like Zscaler offer incredible power, but their complexity can be overkill for a company with 50 to 200 employees.
The opportunity lies in “Lean IT” implementations of Zero Trust, achieving the same granular security using tools that integrate natively with your existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace environments.
The “Anti-Port-Forwarding” Manifesto
One of the most critical, yet often overlooked, aspects of secure remote access for small and mid-sized businesses involves Network Attached Storage (NAS) and media servers. Many organizations rely on Synology units for cost-effective file storage, often opening ports on their firewall to allow employees to access files from home.
This is a critical vulnerability.
Recent data highlights the danger of this “set and forget” approach. The Synology CVE-2024 vulnerability recently exposed a risk where attackers could gain root access via QuickConnect features without any user interaction.
If your current IT strategy involves port forwarding (opening a hole in your firewall to let traffic in), you are operating on borrowed time.
The Modern Alternative of Tunnels
The modern solution avoids touching your firewall’s inbound rules entirely. We advocate for utilizing secure tunneling protocols (like Cloudflare Tunnels or Tailscale) rather than port forwarding.
These solutions create an outbound connection from your server to a secure cloud gateway. Remote users connect to that gateway, not your office IP. The result? Your office firewall blocks all incoming connections, rendering you invisible to bots scanning the internet for open ports, while your team retains full access to their files.
The MFA Gap: Your #1 Vulnerability
While discussing advanced ZTNA architecture is exciting, we must address the elephant in the room. The gap between enterprise security and SMB security is widest regarding Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
According to the JumpCloud SME IT Trends Report 2024, while 87% of large enterprises have fully enforced MFA, only 27% of small businesses (1-25 employees) have implemented it.
This statistic is alarming because MFA is the single most effective deterrent against credential theft. Without it, even the most sophisticated VPN or ZTNA solution can be bypassed by a simple password leak.
A 30-Day MFA Rollout Plan for Distributed Teams
Rolling out MFA often meets resistance due to “user friction.” Here is how we manage this for clients to confirm adoption without revolt:
- Week 1: The Audit. Identify every entry point (Email, VPN, SaaS apps).
- Week 2: The “Admin First” Phase. Enable MFA for all privileged accounts. This is non-negotiable.
- Week 3: The Pilot Group. Roll out to a tech-savvy department using an Authenticator App (Microsoft/Google) rather than SMS, which is susceptible to SIM swapping.
- Week 4: Company-Wide Enforcement. For high-value targets (C-Suite, Finance), consider hardware keys (like YubiKeys) for phishing-resistant protection.
VPN vs. ZTNA vs. SASE
If you are trying to decide where to invest your budget, use this framework to evaluate your current needs against future scalability.
| Feature | Legacy VPN | Lean ZTNA (SMB Focused) | Enterprise SASE |
| Trust Model | Trust the Network (Once inside, you roam free) | Trust the Request (Verify identity per app) | Trust Everything (Identity + Device Posture) |
| User Experience | Often slow, requires toggling on/off | Seamless, “Always On” background operation | Integrated, complex agent required |
| Setup Complexity | Low (Hardware based) | Medium (Policy based) | High (Requires network re-architecture) |
| Best For | Legacy apps requiring raw TCP/IP | Modern, cloud-heavy SMBs | Large, global enterprises with compliance needs |
For most of our clients at SubIT, the “Lean ZTNA” approach offers the sweet spot: it kills the VPN vulnerability without incurring the overhead of a full Enterprise SASE deployment.
Remote Management Nuances
For the technical evaluators reading this, those of you who actually have to make the “remote connect” commands work, the shift to secure remote access changes your daily workflow.
Managing servers remotely often fails not because of the tool, but because of configuration nuance. For example, when moving from RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) to leaner management via PowerShell over SSH, many admins hit a wall with path parsing.
A specific technical detail often missed is the OpenSSH bug in Windows environments regarding spaces in directory names.
Using the legacy “8.3 Path Name” format (e.g., PROGRA~1 instead of Program Files) is a reliable workaround that stabilizes remote scripts. It is this level of granular attention to detail that separates a generic MSP from a true technical partner.
Creating Proactive Connectivity With SubIT
The era of “good enough” remote access is over. The threats, from zero-click NAS exploits to sophisticated phishing, are too advanced for legacy perimeter defenses. But you do not need to overspend on intricate enterprise architecture to be safe.
By focusing on a transition to ZTNA, eliminating port forwarding, and enforcing MFA, you build a remote access strategy that is robust, scalable, and user-friendly.
At SubIT, we focus on right-sizing these technologies for businesses that need to move fast. If you are ready to stop worrying about your remote connections and start trusting them, we are ready to help you architect the solution.
