Microsoft is making the case that your organization’s VPN may be one of its weakest security links, and it wants you to replace it with something new. According to reporting from Neowin, Microsoft is encouraging enterprises to move away from traditional VPNs and adopt Entra Private Access as the primary way its workforce connects to internal resources — part of a broader push toward Zero Trust networking.
What Microsoft is proposing
Traditional VPNs work by opening a single tunnel that, once a device is connected, grants it broad access to a company’s network. In practice, that means logging onto a VPN often gives a laptop or phone the same level of network access as if it were sitting at a desk in the office — including reach to servers, file shares, and internal apps that may have nothing to do with the task at hand.
Microsoft’s pitch is that this all-or-nothing model is outdated. Instead of opening the whole network to any connected device, the company wants access granted per application and per resource, verified every time and limited to exactly what each user needs.
Entra Private Access is Microsoft’s unified platform for delivering that model. It pairs application-level access controls with what Microsoft calls Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) capabilities — a networking approach that routes traffic through cloud-based security points rather than back through a central corporate network.
Why Microsoft says traditional VPNs are risky
The core concern is that a broad VPN tunnel is a large attack surface. If an attacker compromises a single device or steals credentials, they can potentially reach far more of the network than they should. This is especially true as workforces grow more distributed, with employees connecting from home networks, coffee shops, and public Wi-Fi that lack the built-in protections of an office.
Traditional VPNs also tend to be built around the assumption that a connected device is trustworthy. Zero Trust, by contrast, assumes threats can come from anywhere — inside or outside the network — and requires continuous verification of identity, device health, and context before granting access.
By moving access into the cloud and tying it to Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Microsoft argues it can enforce those checks more granularly, without forcing all traffic through a bottleneck that slows users and creates a single point of failure.
What this means for you
For IT leaders and decision-makers, the takeaway is that Microsoft increasingly views the traditional VPN as legacy technology it wants to phase out. If your organization still relies heavily on a perimeter-style VPN, you may want to start planning how to migrate application access to a Zero Trust model.
For most employees, the practical difference should be subtle. Rather than connecting to a VPN and feeling “inside” the corporate network, you’d typically launch specific apps or resources that get checked and granted access on demand. In many cases, that means faster, more reliable connections — and less reliance on a single tunnel that, when it breaks, locks everyone out.
That said, this is a strategic direction Microsoft is promoting, not a mandate. Organizations are free to keep their existing VPNs, and Microsoft is not pulling the plug on VPN support. The shift will happen gradually as companies adopt the newer platform.
How to get it
Entra Private Access sits within Microsoft’s broader Entra security suite. Depending on your licensing, it may be included in Microsoft 365 E5 or Business Premium bundles, or available as an add-on. Because specific packaging and availability can vary, the practical next step is to check your current Microsoft 365 or Entra licensing and work with your provider or internal IT team on a migration plan.
If you’re evaluating this for your organization, start by mapping which applications currently depend on VPN access, then prioritize moving the most sensitive workloads to a per-app, Zero Trust model first.
Bottom line: Microsoft is betting that per-resource, always-verified access will quietly replace the one-big-tunnel VPN of the past. Whether your organization makes the switch — and how soon — is up to you.
Source: Neowin
Over to you: Would you move your organization off traditional VPNs to Entra Private Access, or stick with what already works?
