Your VPN is slowing you down.

Every login. Every tunnel. Every back-and-forth handshake. You built your stack for speed, but your access layer feels like it’s stuck in 2005. That’s why more teams are dropping the VPN and switching to an identity-aware proxy that actually fits how modern systems work.

The problem isn’t just speed. VPNs extend a flat network. Once someone is in, they’re in. You stack firewalls and ACLs on top, but one misconfig, one leaked credential, and the blast radius grows. An identity-aware proxy flips that model. Every request is checked against identity, policy, and context — not once at the door, but across the entire session.

With an identity-aware proxy, the network is irrelevant. Resources live behind application layer rules, not IP trust. Permission changes take effect instantly. Access can be scoped to a single endpoint, a single role, or shut off in real time. It doesn’t matter if your team is spread across continents or just sitting in the same office on different VLANs.

The best part: no client install. No weird split-tunneling configs. No “call IT” moment to refresh a cert. Your app stays where it is — the proxy sits in front, authenticates with your identity provider, and forwards traffic only if the policy says yes. Logging is built in. Auditing is at the request level.

Teams that migrate from VPN to an identity-aware proxy see faster onboarding, tighter security, and fewer after-hours pages. The change isn’t just technical — it clears friction from the daily workflow. One password reset policy in your IdP applies everywhere. One revoked user loses every route instantly.

If you’re done babysitting VPN servers and handling yet another expired client certificate, skip the legacy path. See how hoop.dev gives you identity-aware access without the complexity. Set it up, connect to your identity provider, and watch it go live in minutes.