This is a guest blog post by Shira Rubinoff, Cybersecurity Executive, Author and Advisor.

Organizations of all types and sizes, all around the world, are prioritizing secure distributed work models. This shift has been propelled by the growing adoption of the cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But as work becomes more distributed and more flexible, attack surfaces expanded, creating challenges for SecOps teams that are trying to keep corporate assets secure without adding complexity for employees.

According to the recent State of Security in a Hybrid World survey results, Citrix found that 74 percent of security decision makers believe procedures and controls have become more complex as their organizations transition to remote and hybrid work. This dramatic, rapid shift is creating more opportunity for bad actors to wreak havoc and costing security teams more time and money to mitigate and identify breaches. Companies are also finding themselves ill-prepared to support the increased volume of personnel working remotely. Many deployed an array of VPN solutions to be used with employee personal devices at home. While convenient for employees, they can leave organizations vulnerable.

Enter zero trust security and Citrix Secure Private Access.

While some companies are bringing employees back to the office, many are not, and remote and hybrid work appear here to stay. This shift to new work models has expanded the attack surface and has led to more frequent and sophisticated attacks as bad actors attempt to access organizations’ most valuable assets. As IT and SecOps teams defend against these attacks, they also must ensure employees have a good user experience and remain productive. They need a hybrid security solution that meets the needs of employees, while protecting corporate assets.

A zero trust approach does exactly that. It trusts no one — not known, trusted users from outside or inside an organization. Everyone and everything must be identified and verified, every single time, before access is granted to networks and systems.

The ideal zero trust solution is adaptive and contextual and offers a consistent, high-quality experience for employees, no matter where they’re working. It provides air-tight security that is seamless and invisible to the end user, eliminating the need for employees to memorize or keep track of endless access protocols, passwords, and proxy information.

Citrix Secure Private Access is a new cloud-delivered service that provides zero trust-based adaptive security for all access types and work scenarios, while supporting areas like secure access service edge (SASE) architecture. It also enables IT to:

  • Unify VPN, VPN-less, single sign-on, and other access solutions based on what already deployed in datacenters
  • Define authentication and access policies based on user location, posture of the user’s device, and the user’s risk score
  • Detect changes before or during the user session, providing security controls like watermarking, session recording, and logging off the user which are automatically triggered and enforced

As a cloud-based solution, Citrix Secure Private Access is easy to deploy and manage, is scalable, and is always updated with the latest protections, with security controls enforced in real time, at the edge. Learn more about the benefits and capabilities of Citrix Secure Private Access in this blog post.

In the past, attempts to address these challenges have led to greater complexity as IT admins had to evaluate and deploy multiple security solutions. A great zero trust solution should be a singular one that’s comprehensive and doesn’t lock organizations into a specific investment. It allows for the use of existing on-prem resources and accommodates the adoption of cloud technologies, all while giving admins choice in deployment to satisfy data privacy laws, corporate policies, and local regulations. In addition to Citrix Secure Private Access, there were other exciting announcements during the recent Citrix Launchpad: Security event:

  • A new joint initiative with Google that enables zero trust environments can help to reduce cyber threats and minimize attack surfaces by bringing together Citrix solutions with Chrome OS.
  • Bot management for Citrix Web App and API Protection provides comprehensive, up-to-date security for all apps — no matter their architecture or where they’re deployed. Customers can protect apps from account takeovers and prevent content from being scraped

Don’t worry if you missed the Citrix Launchpad: Security event. You can view the content on demand or check out the blog recap for all the details. You can also hear my thoughts on the event and the state of security in my interview with theCUBE below. And take a look at this summary for an overview of the entire Citrix Launchpad Series.