Secure Router VPN Offloading for Multi-Device Zero Trust Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users with multiple devices face challenges in managing secure network access, as each device requires its own authentication and compute resources for VPN or ZTNA sessions, leading to computational overhead and user experience issues.
Innovation Solution
A user device can offload private network sessions to a secure router, establishing trust through digital certificates and policy management, allowing multiple devices to share the computational burden of encryption and decryption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If each user device establishes its own VPN or ZTNA session with separate authentication and encryption, then security and access control are maintained, but computational overhead and device resource consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the encryption and decryption functions from individual user devices and relocates them to a centralized secure router. The user device establishes a tunnel connection to the router, which then handles all cryptographic operations for multiple devices, thereby reducing computational burden on end devices while maintaining security through centralized cryptographic processing
Solution Approach 2:
The patent combines multiple separate VPN/ZTNA sessions that would otherwise run independently on each device into a single centralized session management architecture. Multiple user devices share a common encrypted tunnel through the secure router, merging cryptographic operations and authentication processes into a unified system that reduces overall computational overhead
2Reliability
If multiple user devices each run their own private network application with separate authentication, then individual device security is ensured, but user experience and ease of operation deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The secure router is designed as a universal access point that handles authentication and session management for multiple different user devices simultaneously. Instead of each device needing separate authentication mechanisms, the router provides a unified authentication interface that serves all devices, improving ease of operation while maintaining individual device security through the centralized authentication process
3Reliability
If encryption and decryption are performed on each user device, then data security is maintained, but network performance and productivity decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The secure router acts as an intermediary device between user devices and the private network. All encryption and decryption operations are performed by this intermediary rather than by the end devices themselves. The router establishes encrypted tunnels to private network resources and handles all cryptographic processing, thereby maintaining data security while improving network performance by offloading computationally intensive operations from client devices
Data Source
AI summary
Concepts and technologies disclosed herein are directed to zero trust network access (“ZTNA”) and virtual private network (“VPN”) client offloading. According to one aspect, a user device can establish a private network session to access a private network resource in a private network. The user device can receive a request to offload the private network session from the user device to a secure router. In response to the request, the user device can offload the private network session to the secure router.