I'm looking for advice on enabling a third-party SaaS to access our internal network while avoiding traditional VPN solutions. The primary concern is ensuring secure access control—without a VPN, every connection must be authenticated and segmented to prevent lateral movement on the network. This implies setting up per-app tunnels, maintaining strict identity-based access policies, and implementing real-time traffic inspection. Each session also needs careful monitoring, restricting exposure to only essential services to avoid sensitive data leaks or privilege escalation. Based on my experience, I believe integrating lightweight network tunnels with app-level access control and ongoing monitoring is crucial for reliability. I'd love to hear about any successful strategies others have used for secure SaaS access without a VPN, while still ensuring visibility and control with minimal disruption. Thanks in advance!
2 Answers
Most teams tackle this by using per-app tunnels along with identity-based access. Think about using a reverse proxy or connector. Authenticate the user or service first, then expose just the specific application rather than granting broad network access. This effectively eliminates lateral movement because there's nowhere else to go from the app.
Real-time packet inspection can get pretty resource-intensive quickly. In practice, strong identity verification, device posture checks, and limiting app exposure often provide better risk reduction compared to trying to analyze all traffic continuously.
But if you're dealing with a third-party, you can't verify the device posture since it's not in your control. That's definitely a limitation.