February 2022 Summaries

Over the past three decades, enterprise VPN technologies have become core elements of network architectures. However, traditional VPNs are brittle, difficult to manage, and less secure. Even the most sophisticated enterprise VPNs suffer from these inherent weaknesses. Choosing the wrong enterprise VPN provider could lock a company into a system that undermines network performance or inhibits business growth. When selecting an enterprise VPN, it's essential to consider four key factors: present and future IT infrastructure, performance, capacity, and scalability, compatibility with existing infrastructure, and ease of use. Enterprise VPNs offer several benefits over traditional VPN infrastructures, including security, integrations, and efficiency. However, they can also be brittle and difficult to manage, undermining business performance. In contrast, modern Zero Trust secure access solutions, such as Twingate's, provide a more secure and maintainable alternative, with unified solutions, performant networks, responsive scalability, easy administration, and improved security. Twingate's design supports phased deployments, making it easier for companies to migrate to a modern Zero Trust network that is more secure than traditional VPNs.

Perimeter 81 is an Israeli network security service provider that offers a cloud-based cybersecurity experience platform, consolidating networking, security, and remote access within a single service. It uses the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model to provide a secure and flexible approach to defending sensitive networked resources. Perimeter 81's features include user management, network management, and network security services such as authentication, encryption, and DNS filtering. The company promotes its broader suite of converged networking services but also offers a subset of these features as a replacement for legacy VPN infrastructure. Twingate, on the other hand, delivers a modern approach to secure network access by establishing software-defined perimeters around every protected network, leveraging Zero Trust Network Access principles to eliminate vulnerabilities. Twingate's focus is on secure access control, offering a simple and easy-to-use administrative console, quick implementation within 15 minutes, and tiered pricing that includes a free option for individuals or small teams. Both Perimeter 81 and Twingate offer solutions to many challenges organizations face from legacy VPN technologies' increasing vulnerability to cybercrime, but they differ in their approach, features, and deployment process.

Staging environments for WordPress sites on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) can be easily created using Twingate Starter, a new free plan designed for home and personal use. With Twingate, users can set up a private staging environment that is completely inaccessible from the public internet but still shareable with collaborators or clients. The process takes under 3 minutes to complete and involves deploying a Twingate Connector on GCP, adding a resource to the network, downloading the Twingate client, and sharing access with others. This solution provides a modern Zero Trust network that is more secure and maintainable than traditional VPNs.

Plex Media Server offers a remote access feature that relies on port forwarding, but configuration may not always work or result in common issues like Double-NAT. This can expose an open port to the home network and potentially be exploited. Twingate Starter is a new free solution designed for home and personal use that does not require setting up a VPN, port forwarding, static IP addresses, or configuring DDNS. It allows users to access their Plex Media Server from anywhere without these cumbersome and insecure approaches. The guide assumes users have installed Plex, WSL, and Docker on their Windows PC and follows the steps to set up Twingate for remote access to Plex Media Server.

A quarter-century ago, remote access VPNs solved a business problem by connecting remote workers to the company network. However, today's distributed networks and workforces make this technology obsolete. Zero Trust Network Access is a modern security paradigm that assumes trust never exists and requires verification of every connection attempt regardless of who the user is, what device they use, or where they connect from. This approach generates several benefits, including resources and devices being anywhere on any network, nothing ever being exposed to the public internet, software-based solutions being simple to deploy and manage, and routing and rules enforcement happening locally rather than round-tripping to central systems. Companies of all sizes can adopt Zero Trust access control to improve their security posture, increase productivity, and make their IT investments more agile. Twingate's modern Zero Trust solution lets large and small companies alike protect their most sensitive resources while enjoying benefits such as protecting resources not networks, invisibility on any network, transparent user experience, simple deployment, and simple management.

Twingate Starter is a free plan designed for home and personal use, allowing users to create private staging environments for WordPress sites on AWS without setting up VPNs or configuring DDNS. To set up Twingate, users first need to sign up for an account and create a remote network, then add a connector to their instance. The connector is installed using a shell command, and the user can then access their site via its private IP address. Users can also share access with clients or collaborators by sending them an email invitation. Twingate provides secure, private access to instances, making it a modern Zero Trust network solution that is more secure and maintainable than traditional VPNs.