Covid-19 accelerated the move to remote and hybrid work. When entire office buildings shut down in 2020, companies had to quickly implement technology to ensure employees could effectively work from home. Today, only 38% of companies require full time in-office work. While remote work has significantly increased worker satisfaction and productivity, more people working remotely increases the risk of data breaches.
Data security is particularly important in industries like wealth management, where remote workers are accessing data from investment portfolios. Unsecure connections could result in significant financial losses for both users and their clients.
Virtual Private Networks
Many companies rely on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to provide a secure connection between employees’ computers and company servers. A VPN creates a secure tunnel between the two, and data traveling through this tunnel is encrypted. However, working from home or a regular workplace is different from working from an airport, train station, or coffee shop. If you are on the road and need to safely connect to corporate assets, you need increased security measures. In fact, in a recent VPN risk report, 88% of organizations expressed deep concern over potential breaches due to VPN vulnerabilities.
Cloud-Native Private Endpoints
Cloud-native private endpoints offer a secure and efficient way for users to connect to corporate assets from anywhere. Unlike traditional VPNs, these endpoints are certificate-based. The process involves setting up a virtual network gateway, and generating root certificates and client certificates, and configuring them through the cloud portal. Once the certificates are set up, users can connect securely to the corporate network from any location, ensuring data integrity and confidentiality.
The certificate-based method minimizes the possibility of unauthorized connections using key pairs, one private and one public, which are linked to one another via a complex algorithm. When a user requests a connection, the server asks for the user’s private key and only connects the user to the company server if the keys match. It is like a having a password, but that password has more than 4,000 digits. If those private keys do not match, there is no possibility of connection.
Cloud-native private endpoints offer comparable capacity and performance to traditional VPN solutions, just with certificate based authentication rather than user credentials or another alternative. They provide the same bandwidth and speed as traditional VPNs, often at a lower price.
“One of the challenges companies face is how to balance the need for compliance, security, and efficiency. The cloud-native private endpoint allows you to work from any location and still have the security you need to continue to operate within the compliance terms that you have.” Ryan Flaherty, ITS Technician.
Increased Security
The certificate-based approach ensures connections are authorized through encryption keys, mitigating the security risks associated with remote work. There is little risk to adopting private endpoints as long as the company thoroughly tests the system before deploying it and ensures proper deployment to all workers. Companies must also be vigilant when adding new employees.
Easy Implementation
The implementation process involves a one-time setup that takes under a month to deploy. There is no disruption to existing VPN solutions while the system is implemented. A phased approach includes internal testing, client testing, and thorough quality assurance, ensuring a seamless transition.
There is minimal ongoing maintenance beyond ensuring certificates do not expire and making sure new users are properly set up when hiring new employees. Employee compliance is essential for the system to work.
Empowering Businesses for the Future of Remote Work
Private endpoints add a level of connectivity security that is required in today’s landscape of remote and hybrid workers. Traditional VPNs worked well as a way to securely work from home during the pandemic, but the technology behind VPNs has gotten more sophisticated, providing workers increased security to safely work from home or in airports, train stations, coffee shops, and other crowded, open network locations.
If data security is essential for your business, you need to add private endpoints to your security protocols. This certificate-based method minimizes the possibility of unauthorized connections.
As companies adapt to changing technology landscapes, having a technology partner like MD Solutions is essential. MD Solutions brings over 25 years of wealth-management industry experience, with deep understanding of the complexities of financial management industry technology and remote work security.
MD Solutions is Helping Firms Implement Security Solutions Like These
When MD Solutions sees an issue like data security that their clients need to have resolved, they use their overarching expertise in the wealth management tech stack to creatively evaluate the issue. They take the time to fully explore possible solutions to determine the best fit for their clients and diligently search for solutions that are reasonably priced and properly supported.
The team recognized the increased need for increased security for remote workers and understood its wealth management clients cannot sacrifice compliance and efficiency. MD Solutions developed a solution that strikes the right balance of performance with ease of use without significantly increasing costs, including a streamlined implementation process that does not disrupt operations.
In fact, MD Solutions can deploy cloud-native private endpoints in around 30 days, and lets you keep using your current solution until the new one is deployed. MD Solutions gathers the information they need and configures everything on their side without disrupting your business. They do internal and external testing before deploying the solution to confirm the system works. When all tests are completed and functionality is confirmed, the system goes live and you can remove the old system.