May 2023 Summaries

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote work models, pushing organizations to adopt new security measures. The concept of Zero Trust has gained significant attention as companies look to secure their workforce and sensitive data in a more decentralized environment. This shift is driven by the need for granular access control, as traditional perimeter-based security models proved insufficient. Companies are embracing security as a shared responsibility, with products needing to enable other parts of the business to participate in access controls. Modern security products must be usable, prioritizing end-user experience, buy-in, adoption, and time-to-value. Effective leaders will excel at communicating with other departments, fostering education around security best practices and reinforcing the need for secure operations. Ultimately, managing access is key to cybersecurity, ensuring that the right people have access to the right things while preventing unauthorized access.

TwinGate has recently released several new integrations with various cybersecurity tools, including Datadog, SentinelOne, Aptible, and Kandji. These integrations aim to enhance the benefits of other cybersecurity tools by providing a seamless and secure experience for users. With these new integrations, Twingate is positioning itself as a central orchestration layer that makes it easy to bridge together various component solutions to form a unique security environment. The goal is to provide a best-in-class security ecosystem without having to recut the network. These integrations are designed to help organizations implement a modern Zero Trust network that is more secure and maintainable than traditional VPNs.

Most organizations are still in the "build phase" of implementing Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), with only a small percentage having fully mature implementations. The majority of respondents can segment traffic on a resource level, but there are significant gaps in implementing least-privilege access, reducing public attack surface, upgrading authentication protocols to FIDO2/WebAuthn, and managing all ZTNA pillars under a single pane of glass. To address these challenges, organizations should focus on segmenting and filtering traffic at the resource level, upgrading their identity authentication protocols, adopting least-privilege access models, and centralizing the management of their ZTNA infrastructure. By benchmarking their ZTNA practices against industry benchmarks, organizations can identify areas for improvement and create a roadmap to achieve a comprehensive, robust ZTNA infrastructure.

TwinGate, a modern alternative to traditional VPNs, faced challenges in maintaining open communication with its rapidly expanding customer base. Initially using Slack Connect channels for easier communication, the company grew significantly, but these channels became unscalable and caused issues such as unanswered queries due to team members being on PTO. To address this, Twingate implemented a technical improvement and operational changes, including limiting access to customers on Enterprise tiers, redirecting support requests, and assigning main contacts for each channel. They also created a Slackbot that funnels all messages from customer channels into a central internal channel, allowing team members to respond directly. These changes have had an overwhelmingly positive outcome, with customers continuing to communicate through Slack and the company maintaining its personal touch despite growth.