For decades, VPN was the default answer to remote access security – reliable, familiar, and deeply embedded in enterprise architecture. That era is ending. AI has accelerated attack timelines from weeks to minutes, automated credential theft at industrial scale, and given adversaries a speed advantage that human-led defense cannot match. VPN was built for a world where defenders had time to patch, investigate, and respond. That world no longer exists.
Our survey of 822 IT and cybersecurity professionals surfaces a persistent gap: organizations recognize VPN risk clearly, but the perimeter-based access architecture they still depend on cannot contain AI-driven threats that now move in minutes. The remaining question is how fast they replace it.
The VPN architecture itself is the constraint. Faster patching, better monitoring, and tighter policies help at the margins, but none address the underlying exposure VPN creates by design, and AI-driven attacks now exploit that exposure faster than any manual process can close it.
This report examines each risk in detail, quantifies the operational cost, and provides a readiness assessment structured around the CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model to help security leaders measure the gap and prioritize the path from Reactive to Resilient maturity levels. The window to act is measured in the same unit as the threats: minutes.
