Securing Third-Party Access from Unmanaged Devices

Many organizations invest millions in securing their employees. However, a common scenario arises where an external vendor, consultant, contractor, or business partner accesses critical systems from their personal device.

While this might sound extreme, it is a reality in numerous organizations. As businesses increasingly collaborate with suppliers, partners, external developers, and contract workers, the need to grant access to organizational resources grows, even when their devices are not managed by the organization.

The Challenge of External Access

This situation presents several key challenges:

• How can access be enabled without connecting an unmanaged device to the corporate network?
• How can sensitive information be prevented from being downloaded to a personal computer?
• How can actions like copying, printing, or uploading files be restricted?
• How can all this be achieved without setting up a complex and expensive VDI environment?

The Rise of Enterprise Browsers

In recent years, we've observed a significant shift from traditional VPN and VDI approaches to solutions based on Enterprise Browsers. Instead of granting direct access from the user's device, the organization provides a secure work environment controlled by its corporate security policies.

This approach allows access only to the necessary applications and information, while implementing advanced security controls such as:

• Blocking file downloads
• Preventing copy and paste operations
• Blocking printing
• Restricting file uploads
• Preventing local storage of sensitive information
• Monitoring and logging user activity

One of the prominent solutions in this domain is Netskope Enterprise Browser. It enables external vendors, BYOD users, and temporary employees to securely access organizational resources through a secure corporate browser. This is achieved without the need to install an agent on the endpoint and without directly exposing the corporate network.

This approach empowers organizations to implement Zero Trust principles even for unmanaged users, all while maintaining a simple and efficient user experience.

In a world where the boundary between internal and external users is increasingly blurred, Enterprise Browser solutions are becoming an ever more critical component of modern security architecture.

How does your organization currently manage external vendor and BYOD user access?