Security shouldn’t be this complicated.
Seven P2P VPN Security Risks You Can't Ignore:
There's a better way: Twingate
Twingate is a modern and simple approach to Zero Trust Access that replaces legacy VPNs with a faster, more secure way to connect users to private resources.
Instead of granting broad network access and creating security risks, Twingate enables granular, identity-based access to specific applications and resources. It's built for the cloud-native world—works seamlessly with modern infrastructure, deploys in minutes, and scales effortlessly through automation.
The result? Developers and teams get instant, secure access to what they need without friction. Security teams get visibility, control, and dramatically reduced attack surface. No more choosing between speed and security.
Beware integrated network gateways
Network gateways are a leading source of breaches. Even more than phishing. 1 in 3 breaches can be traced to network gateways and associated technology. Some P2P VPNs rely too much on an installed network gateway. This approach makes every endpoint a potential ingress point, and unless you install the agent on every single system in your network and every cloudnose, you must become a Linux sysadmin and a network engineer in your spare time, you have to be an network engineer.
A modern approach uses the best of P2P transport, but maintains separation of concerns, so that deployment is simple to manage as you scale and so that risk is better managed.
The combined network gateway and client approach is simple for the first few devices, but complexity grows with scale. You should not have to give up simplicity when you scale out your deployment.
Exploited vulnerabilities have surpassed phishing and stolen credentials as the leading initial access method. Attackers exploit network gateways in one-third of intrusions, and the most significant trend is attackers increasingly targeting network gateways through zero-day vulnerabilities.
A Better Way: Separation of Client and Connector Responsibilities
Twingate separates client and connector responsibilities to minimize attack surface and operational complexity. This architecture provides separation of concerns, a critical security design goal. Twingate Clients provide secure connectivity without exposing gateway functionality, while Twingate Connectors are deployed only where needed—in your data centers, cloud environments, or specific network segments. This separation ensures that compromising an endpoint doesn't grant attackers gateway-level network access. Scaling your deployment can be automated with exactly the right number of connectors, delivering both operational simplicity and reduced risk as you grow.
Performance and resilience should not be a derpy afterthought
Zero Trust Network Access must deliver consistent performance and resilience across all connection scenarios—not just when conditions are ideal. Some P2P architectures work well only when direct peer connections succeed. They become “derpy” and degrade significantly when P2P fails. Relying on pure peer-to-peer connectivity with fallback relay infrastructure as an afterthought creates unpredictable user experiences and operational challenges.
Direct P2P connections fail sometimes—due to restrictive firewalls, complex NAT configurations, or network policies blocking UDP—some architectures fall back to servers that were designed as emergency measures rather than production infrastructure. These servers attempt to maintain connectivity but they introduce problems:
Protocol overhead: TCP connection management, acknowledgment requirements, and congestion control add latency compared to high-performance protocols.
QoS throttling: Shared relay nodes often face aggressive Quality of Service measures that limit throughput, as traffic competes with other users' relayed connections on the same infrastructure.
Unpredictable degradation: Users experiencing fallback servers face "significant performance degradation" that makes interactive tasks like SSH, RDP, or database queries frustratingly slow. Backup connections "result in additional latency" and fundamentally "limit throughput" compared to direct connections.
A Better Way: P2P Backed by a Purpose-Built Global Relay Fleet
The Twingate Global Relay Fleet treats resilience as a core component of Zero Trust Network Architecture. Availability must be a requirement, not an afterthought. Rather than treating relay infrastructure as emergency fallback, Twingate's relay fleet is purpose-built for production performance:
Purpose-built for production traffic: Relay nodes are designed, sized, and optimized to handle encrypted tunnel traffic at scale, with dedicated capacity rather than shared, throttled resources.
Globally distributed for performance: The platform automatically selects optimal paths—whether direct P2P or relay-assisted—based on real-time performance characteristics, not just connection success/failure.
Intelligently routed: Users experiencing fallback servers face "significant performance degradation" that makes interactive tasks like SSH, RDP, or database queries frustratingly slow. Backup connections "result in additional latency" and fundamentally "limit throughput" compared to direct connections.
Consistently performant: Whether connections traverse direct paths or relay infrastructure, users experience predictable performance that meets the demands of interactive applications and business-critical workflows.
The Twingate approach ensures that security, resilience, and performance are co-equal requirements delivered through purpose-built infrastructure—not trade-offs managed through fallback mechanisms. Organizations gain the confidence that access performance remains consistent across diverse network environments and changing connection conditions, with speeds up to three times faster than traditional VPN approaches.
P2P Implementation Risk: UPnP Security Vulnerabilities
Some P2P VPNs use UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) to automatically establish connections by configuring port forwarding on routers. While this approach may simplify establishing a P2P connection, it introduces critical security risks that undermine network defense. UPnP operates with no authentication or authorization, creating exploitable attack vectors that allow any device on the local network to reconfigure firewall rules.
The threat is particularly severe when combined with integrated network gateways. If malware compromises any internal device, it can silently use UPnP to expose internal systems to the public internet, establishing backdoors for remote access, data exfiltration, or botnet recruitment—all without user knowledge. When the exposed device is also functioning as a network gateway, the entire protected network becomes vulnerable, not just the compromised endpoint.
UPnP has been historically plagued by implementation vulnerabilities that enable remote code execution (such as the CallStranger exploit) and have been leveraged for massive DDoS amplification attacks. The protocol allows unilateral, unauthorized modifications to network security boundaries, bypassing firewall protections and IT security policies designed to control network access.
CISA explicitly warns against UPnP usage. While acknowledging it may be "handy for some consumer applications," CISA states it "is also a security risk" and has traced large-scale network attacks to UPnP bypassing network policies. Their guidance is unequivocal: "You should therefore disable UPnP…"
A Better Way: Secure Outbound-Only Connections
Twingate does not rely on UPnP or automatic firewall modification to establish connections. Instead, Twingate uses secure, outbound-only connections that work within existing firewall policies:
No firewall reconfiguration required: Twingate Clients and Connectors establish outbound connections and negotiate P2P or relayed paths with no need to open inbound ports or modify router configurations.
IT maintains control: Network security policies remain intact and under centralized management. Endpoints cannot unilaterally expose internal resources or create unauthorized access paths.
Defense-in-depth preserved: Firewalls continue functioning as intended security boundaries rather than being dynamically reconfigured by endpoint software.
Zero trust by design: Access is authenticated and authorized through identity and policy, not through network-level port exposure that malware could exploit.
The Twingate approach delivers the connectivity benefits of P2P architectures without the attack surface expansion and policy bypass risks inherent in UPnP-dependent approaches. Organizations maintain their security posture while enabling seamless remote access across diverse network environments.
Mesh networks make a mess of zero trust architecture
Mesh topologies distribute policy enforcement across every connected node. In P2P VPNs, this approach creates operational complexity and undermines centralized security control. While mesh architectures promise simplicity through peer-to-peer connectivity, the reality is that distributing security policy across potentially hundreds or thousands of endpoints introduces management challenges that conflict with zero-trust principles. In some cases, it becomes impossible to gain visibility into connections or apply centralized policy.
Managing access control in a mesh topology requires defining and maintaining ACL rules across every node. As a network grows, so does the complexity—requiring dedicated network engineering effort to generate and update policy files distributed to every node. These files must define enterprise-wide network segmentation, which unnecessarily exposes network topology data, and when IP addresses change, policies must be manually updated across the mesh. This pushes network engineering responsibilities onto teams that should be focused on business outcomes, not infrastructure maintenance.
In mesh-based systems, updating an ACL isn't a single action—it's a multi-step propagation process across all connected peers. This creates delays in policy activation, especially in larger or dynamic networks. When you need to revoke access immediately—responding to a security incident or offboarding an employee—propagation latency means the old policy may remain active on some nodes while updating on others. This inconsistency is fundamentally incompatible with zero-trust requirements for immediate, authoritative policy enforcement.
A Better Way: Centralized Policy with Distributed Enforcement
Twingate is designed around enterprise architecture: centralized resource protection with policy enforced at the client and in the Connectors. Rather than making every device a policy distribution point, Twingate separates concerns:
Centralized policy management: IT defines and updates access policies from a single control plane. Changes take effect immediately across all enforcement points without multi-step propagation delays.
Client and Connectors protect resources: Instead of turning laptops into network nodes, Twingate Client and Connectors enforce a policy that is centrally defined, providing consistent, managed access control.
Scalable without complexity: Adding users, devices, or resources doesn't require editing JSON ACL files or reconfiguring mesh topology.
Immediate policy enforcement: Revocations, policy updates, and access grants take effect instantly at enforcement points. No waiting for mesh propagation or wondering which nodes have current policy.
The Twingate architecture delivers clean, scalable control over the resources your business runs on—without mesh complexity, policy sprawl, or the operational burden of distributed policy management. IT maintains centralized visibility and control while users gain seamless access to what they need, when they need it.
DNS isn’t magic and needs protection
Secure access requires connection defense—protecting users at the point they request a connection, not just routing packets. Outdated VPN architectures that enforce policies exclusively at the IP layer without FQDN evaluation create unacceptable security gaps.
IP-only access control cannot:
Prevent DNS hijacking: When attackers compromise DNS or poison caches, users connect to malicious IPs while believing they're reaching legitimate services.
Block malicious domains: Security relies on domain reputation and threat intelligence. Without FQDN visibility, you cannot stop connections to known-bad domains that resolve to seemingly legitimate IPs.
Enforce service-level intent: Users should access hosts by name, not IP. IP-based policies obscure what service was actually accessed, preventing meaningful audit trails and least-privilege enforcement.
Detect domain fronting: Attackers leverage legitimate IPs (CDNs, cloud providers) while accessing malicious domains. IP-only controls are blind to this evasion.
Without DNS controls, enterprises have no visibility into connection intent, which exposes the DNS compromise attack surface, and creates compliance gaps around domain-based logging requirements. Zero trust demands DNS-integrated policy enforcement evaluating WHO (identity), WHAT (FQDN + IP), and WHY (authorization intent). IP-only control shifts excessive risk to application-layer defenses that may not exist or be consistently applied.
Organizations deploying IP-only systems must implement compensating controls—secure DNS resolvers, DNS firewalls, mandatory reverse proxies—or formally accept DNS-based attack risks. Without these safeguards, IP-only access enforcement represents a critical control gap in any defense-in-depth architecture.
A Better Way: FQDN-Based Policy with Integrated DNS Security
Twingate Private Access and Internet Security support FQDN-based policy enforcement with integrated DNS security, enabling true connection defense that evaluates both the domain users intend to access and blocks malicious destinations before any traffic flows—eliminating the critical gaps inherent in IP-only access control systems.
Granting broad network access violates zero trust and least privilege access
The following default policy configuration represents a fundamental violation of zero trust principles. This config is a breach in the making, worse than a default “password” granting access to your network.
With a single access grant clients can access all destinations over any protocol, including P2P mesh connections. This approach violates default-deny principles and increases risk.
Such a grant is the opposite of "never trust, always verify." The grant creates maximum rather than minimum necessary access: no segmentation (unrestricted lateral movement) and no connection intent validation (any connection permitted regardless of business justification). Beyond the immediate security risk, this architecture creates insurmountable compliance and operational challenges through distributed P2P logging that scatters audit data across individual endpoints rather than providing a centralized, authoritative source of truth. Forensic investigations require collecting logs from potentially hundreds of devices where failures, offline systems, or local tampering create permanent audit gaps—making it impossible to answer "who accessed what, when, and why" or prove negative access for compliance verification. Auditors and regulatory frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA) demand centralized, tamper-proof audit trails, not fragmented data collection across mesh nodes.
Organizations deploying solutions with permit-all defaults and distributed logging face an impossible choice: manually rebuild zero-trust segmentation from scratch, accept compliance risks from fragmented audit trails, or deploy compensating controls (distributed log aggregators and additional monitoring). The reality is that such unrestricted access is risky and creates security debt that compounds over time, making risk management harder and every audit more painful. Security metrics become unreliable with sampling bias and blind spots, troubleshooting requires manual log correlation across nodes, and incident response lacks the complete timeline reconstruction that centralized logging provides. True zero trust demands default deny, centralized policy enforcement, and authoritative audit logging as foundational architecture. You can’t secure what you can’t see. Wide open P2P policies make\ troubleshooting, auditing, and compliance harder than it should be.
A Better Way: Default Deny with Centralized Audit Logging
Twingate Private Access delivers true zero trust by default: every resource requires explicit policy authorization with no permit-all grants, enforcing least-privilege access where users can only reach approved services. All connection attempts, whether permitted or denied, flow through policy enforcement points on the client and within the connectors. Twingate generates authoritative audit logs—eliminating distributed logging gaps and providing complete visibility for compliance verification, security monitoring, and forensic investigation. The Twingate approach delivers both operational simplicity and security rigor, with default deny and comprehensive observability as core platform features, not premium upgrades or manual implementations.
Zero Trust Access must be as available as your business
Zero trust access is only effective if it's available when users need it. Some P2P VPN architectures struggle with consistent availability as environments scale, creating unpredictable service interruptions that undermine both security and productivity.
P2P VPNs, the cloud control plane and relay infrastructure are complex systems. Public uptime histories reveal recurring patterns of availability versus instability. It’s important to inspect these reports for chronic evidence of outages:
Relay infrastructure degradation
Policy propagation failures
Outages caused by control-plane dependencies
Issues caused by such failures aren't theoretical risks—they're documented. Recurring patterns are visible in public status pages. For businesses that depend on reliable access to critical resources, these disruptions translate directly to lost productivity, missed deadlines, and security gaps when frustrated users seek workarounds to bypass failing access controls.
You usually can inspect service status histories, and discern patterns. You can also investigate how services fared during widespread outages (like the recent Google and Amazon outages. While no service is perfect, chronic and recurring issues will negatively impact your business, and you should be cautious.
A Better Way: Survivable Architecture with Decoupled Control Plane
Twingate learned these lessons early and built a survivable architecture, separating client and connector responsibilities rather than making every device a policy distribution point and cleaning decoupling control plane, data place, and policy controls. IT defines access policies, with changes taking effect immediately at enforcement points—no multi-step propagation delays. Purpose-built Connectors sit alongside critical resources providing consistent access control, while adding users or resources requires no JSON file editing or mesh reconfiguration. Revocations and policy updates execute instantly across all enforcement points. This architecture delivers scalable control without mesh complexity or distributed policy management burden, maintaining centralized visibility while providing seamless user access.
