This is not a commentary on whether most blank-check companies are trustworthy investments. It is a recognition that rarely is a business model better aligned to a technology solution as special purpose acquisition companies are with Zero Trust Network Access.Â
Two years ago, if you said “SPAC†on the NYSE trading floor, traders would have assumed you meant the wonderful outdoor amphitheater in Saratoga. Not anymore.
A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. Also known as “blank-check companies,†SPACs have been around for decades. Somehow, in 2020, they became an overnight sensation. Now, everyone from the former president of Goldman Sachs to basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and rapper Jay-Z are involved.
In fact, 237 SPACS went public in 2020, raising approximately $80B. SPACS made up 50% of the IPO market. So far in 2021, things are only accelerating.
While financial engineering has its benefits and dominates the headlines, at the end of the day, these organizations are in the business of selling products and making money.Â
One of the most vexing problems for organizations built on M&A activity is integration and rationalization of technology infrastructure.Â
How do you align legacy and cloud-native infrastructure, or provide secure remote access to new employees? What about their partners and suppliers who need access to mission-critical business applications? Reducing risk and consolidating operations before and after a merger is critical to ensuring success. Any delay in getting stakeholders in one organization access to resources in the other has a direct impact on the bottom line. Yet, newly acquired networks may be compromised. Maintaining separate networks and multiple VPNs can prevent users from accessing critical resources, but technology integrations can take years.
In our connected world, you are acquiring more than the target company, you are also acquiring, or accepting the responsibility for all the third-party organizations that support that business as well.Â
Learn More: Why the Evolution of Zero Trust Must Begin With Data Protection
Zero Trust for SPACs
This is not a commentary on whether most SPACS are trustworthy investments. It is a recognition that rarely is a business model better aligned to a technology solution as SPACs are with Zero Trust Network Access.Â
Zero trust is a framework for security. It means what it says. No user is trusted whether they are an employee or a third party. They are treated as equals, with zero trust. Once the user has been granted access, zero trust persists, with each move analyzed and authenticated.Â
This is critical because companies that rely on M&A are in a cycle of adding new employees, plus a series of partners, suppliers, and contractors, all of whom need various levels of access to business applications. As we have seen recently with Solarwinds and the Microsoft Exchange hack, third-party access can give bad actors a backdoor into your business. Providing access to a unified organization quickly is important, but it must not be done at the expense of security.
Three Reasons SPACs Should Deploy Zero Trust Network AccessÂ
1. Rapid deployment:
Zero Trust Network Access is rapidly deployed in the cloud and provides nearly unlimited scale for quick adoption by new users. Traditional access solutions, like VPNs, have proven throughout 2020 to be difficult to deploy and scale, taking too much time and resources. Even the mighty Cisco had to ration VPN access during the early days of COVID.Â
VPN hardware is complex to deploy and fragile to maintain. In the best of times VPNs are inconvenient to use, expensive to manage, grant excessive access, leave you blind to application activity, and expose resources to attacks. ZTNA is the easy, low-risk way to extend secure application access to users across separate organizations without IT exposure or consolidation.
ZTNA solutions can be deployed in minutes, not weeks, and have no physical or virtual appliances to manage. You can now apply the enormous amount of time spent in configuring and managing legacy appliances to other areas of IT that can accelerate business. By freeing up security staff from the mundane labor-intensive tasks of managing legacy hardware, it helps alleviate IT security staff shortages. Additionally, it provides time for security professionals to focus on more critical aspects of modern cybersecurity.
2. Reduced threat surface:
With ZTNA, the cloud keeps these new employees, and all their related third-party suppliers and partners, whoever they may be, off the corporate network and separate from the applications themselves. This isolation of the user from the resources greatly reduces the threat surface and risk of threat actors gaining access to the network. Continuous visibility over user behavior with zero trust policies controls access permissions down to the finest detail.
3. Better user experience:
ZTNA solutions greatly improve usability and functionality for end users compared to traditional network-based access solutions like VPNs. As cloud-native solutions, ZTNA delivers a familiar web-based interface that allows users to interact with managed applications from anywhere on any device. No agent installation or training required.Â
Learn More: 5 Things To Think About When Shifting to Zero Trust
Will SPACs Last on Wall Street?
Time will tell if the SPAC craze lasts on Wall Street. One thing that certainly will endure across the business world is the need to deliver secure remote access for a wide variety of stakeholders. The cloud provides the platform needed for continuous security monitoring, distributed and granular policy controls, and analysis of every request. In the cloud, you can treat every user the exact same, with zero trust.
Let us know if you liked this article or tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!