The New Reality of Work
Hybrid work has redefined enterprise access. Employees, contractors, and partners are no longer confined to office networks — they’re connecting from homes, shared spaces, and mobile devices across geographies.
While this flexibility drives productivity, it has also introduced a new form of risk: remote access without verified identity assurance.
Many organizations still rely on credentials alone to authenticate users. But when those credentials belong to offboarded contractors or are cached on unmanaged devices, the risk becomes invisible — until it’s too late.
The Challenge We Heard
A customer told us this week about a blind spot within their environment.
Work-from-home employees and third-party contractors were accessing critical systems from personal or unmanaged endpoints, often over home or public networks.
Even though they used official company credentials, IT had no way to verify if those users were still active in the organization.
Disconnected directories, delayed deprovisioning, and static VPN-based access controls meant that trust persisted far longer than employment.
Their question was simple:
“How can we make sure only active, verified users — on approved devices — are allowed to connect to our systems?”
The BAAR Secure Tunnel Approach
BAAR Secure Tunnel (BST) was built for exactly this challenge — to bring Zero Trust principles to every remote connection without sacrificing user experience.
BST ensures every access attempt begins with identity verification, not just credentials or network location.
How it works:
- Directory Validation: Before access is granted, BST checks user status in BAAR Cloud Directory — ensuring only active employees and approved contractors can connect.
- MFA and Passwordless Push: Adds a second layer of assurance during device or domain login, preventing unauthorized endpoint access.
- Ephemeral Session Trust: Once the user’s identity is verified, access is granted only for the duration of that verified session — no persistent tunnels or static tokens.
- Unified Visibility: Security teams get continuous insight into who connected, from where, and under which identity — across employees, partners, and contractors.
- The result: Identity becomes the perimeter. Every session, every device, every user is validated dynamically and continuously.
Real-World Impact
After deploying BST, the customer eliminated a critical blind spot in their hybrid environment.
Inactive contractors were automatically denied access, remote employees could connect securely from anywhere, and IT teams finally had unified visibility into all user activity — regardless of network.
What used to be a weak point in their access strategy is now one of their strongest controls.
Key Takeaways
- The future of remote access depends on identity validation, not network location.
- BAAR Secure Tunnel ensures only active, authorized users can reach internal systems — wherever they work from.
- Integrated directory checks, MFA, and passwordless authentication close the remote access gap without disrupting productivity.
- Hybrid work can be both secure and seamless when every connection begins with trust.
