What Is a VPN and Does Your Business Actually Need One?

What is a VPN, and does your business actually need one in 2026? The technology has been around for decades, but the role it plays has changed substantially. Traditional VPNs that gave remote users access to corporate networks are increasingly being replaced by zero trust network access (ZTNA) approaches. The honest answer to whether your business needs a VPN: maybe, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Here's the practical framing.

What VPN Actually Means

A Virtual Private Network creates an encrypted tunnel between a client device and a network endpoint, with traffic between them protected from observation on the underlying internet. The traditional business use case: remote employees connecting to the corporate network from outside, with their traffic appearing as if it originated from inside the corporate LAN.

That use case made sense when "corporate network" was where most business resources lived. With most business workloads now in the cloud, the traditional VPN architecture is doing less useful work than it used to.

The Three VPN Use Cases That Still Make Sense

Despite the shift toward ZTNA, VPN still has legitimate use cases:

• Site-to-site VPN — connecting business locations to each other or to cloud resources. Still standard architecture for multi-site environments without SD-WAN.
• Access to on-premises resources — when there are business-critical resources still hosted on-premises that remote employees need to reach, a VPN provides the connection. ZTNA is gradually replacing this but not at all businesses yet.
• Specific compliance scenarios — some regulatory frameworks explicitly require VPN encryption for certain types of remote access

The VPN Use Cases That Are Being Replaced

The traditional "VPN for everything remote" pattern is being replaced by more targeted approaches:

• Access to SaaS applications — no VPN needed; SaaS apps are accessed directly through the internet with proper identity controls
• General internet privacy — VPN through a corporate gateway adds latency and creates unnecessary traffic; modern SASE delivers this better
• Bypassing geographic restrictions — usually a violation of terms of service for the restricted content; not a legitimate business use case
• Hiding traffic from the local network — if you're on a corporate network, the corporate network probably should see corporate traffic for security monitoring purposes

What ZTNA Is Replacing It With

Zero Trust Network Access provides connectivity to specific applications without giving the user broad network access. Instead of "you're on the corporate network so you can see everything," ZTNA grants access to specific applications based on identity and device posture. The user experience is often better (faster, no VPN client to manage) and the security posture is better (compromised user device doesn't get access to everything on the network).

ZTNA is the dominant direction for new remote access deployments. Existing VPNs are being phased out over time as businesses migrate.

If You Still Need a VPN

For businesses where VPN still has legitimate use, the configuration choices that matter:

• Always-on vs. on-demand — always-on VPN connects automatically when the user is outside the office; on-demand requires user action. Always-on is typically better for security.
• Split tunnel vs. full tunnel — split tunnel routes only corporate traffic through the VPN; full tunnel routes everything. Split tunnel is usually better for user experience; full tunnel is better when corporate security inspection of all traffic is required
• MFA enforcement — VPN access without MFA is a credential-theft target. Phishing-resistant MFA on VPN is the modern standard
• Device posture checking — only managed, compliant devices should establish VPN sessions
• Logging and monitoring — who connected when, from where, with what device. Audit-grade logging.

The Practical Recommendation

For most SMBs in 2026: maintain existing VPN for the specific use cases that still need it (site-to-site, on-premises access), but plan to migrate user remote access from VPN to ZTNA over the next 12-24 months. The transition produces better security and better user experience. If you're scoping your remote access architecture or evaluating ZTNA migration, a conversation with our team can frame the path.