The End of the "Full-Tunnel" Era

For 20 years, the Cisco AnyConnect VPN was the undisputed king of remote access. It was reliable, it was secure, and it was the standard. But in a world where 80% of your applications live in the cloud and your workforce is distributed across 500 different home offices, that "Full-Tunnel" model is becoming a drain on your bandwidth, your latency, and your sanity.

I’ve sat in boardrooms where the CISO is demanding Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) because it’s the new industry standard. But when I go down to the engineering floor, the mood is different. Engineers are terrified. They know that "flipping the switch" from VPN to ZTNA is a high-wire act. One bad policy and 5,000 users are locked out of their critical apps.

ModernCyber and other competitors will give you a "Strategy." I’m going to give you the actual 4-Phase Engineering Roadmap we use at Technoxi to migrate users to Cisco Secure Access (SSE) without a single minute of production downtime.

Phase 1: The "Invisible" Traffic Audit

Before you change a single bit of configuration, you need to know what’s actually happening on your VPN.

The Common Mistake: Engineers try to map ZTNA policies based on old firewall rules. Don't do this. Firewall rules are often stale and way too broad.

The Ex-TAC Strategy: Deploy the Cisco Secure Access (Umbrella) agent in "Reporting Only" mode for two weeks.

1. Map every DNS request and IP-to-IP flow.
2. Identify "Shadow IT" apps that aren't on your official list.
3. Identify "Hairpin" traffic (e.g., users connecting to the VPN just to reach a public SaaS app like Salesforce).

Phase 1 Gate Criteria: You have a validated list of the top 20 business-critical applications and their required FQDNs/IPs.

Phase 2: The Greenfield "Side-by-Side" Test

Do not try to move your whole company on day one. Start by deploying ZTNA alongside your existing VPN.

The Engineering Logic: Configure the Cisco Secure Client to handle both AnyConnect and Secure Access. Pick one "Low-Risk" internal application—something like your internal Wiki or a Jira instance.

1. Create a ZTNA policy that routes traffic for wiki.internal.inc through the Secure Access cloud.
2. Ensure all other traffic still goes through the AnyConnect VPN tunnel.

This allows you to test the SAML/OIDC identity headers and the latency of the cloud-proxy without any risk to the core business.

Phase 2 Gate Criteria: Users can access the test application with less than 50ms of added latency compared to the VPN.

Phase 3: The "Soft-Launch" Rollout

Now you move people, not just apps. But you don't move them by department—you move them by "Technical Risk."

The Human Side (User Comms): Communication is just as important as configuration. We provide our customers with templates like this:

Subject: We’re making your remote access faster (and simpler). The Change: Over the next week, your connection to [App Name] will move to our new Secure Access system. What to expect: You won't need to manually click "Connect" on the VPN anymore. The app will just work, whether you're at Starbucks or at home.

The Tech: Use your MDM to push the new ZTNA policy to the IT department first. Let them break it. Once they’re stable, move to the "Early Adopter" group in the business.

Phase 4: VPN Retirement

This is the final stage. You start moving your "Heavy" apps—the on-prem ERPs and Legacy DBs—into the ZTNA "Private Access" tunnels.

The "Ex-TAC" Tip: Don't turn off the VPN head-ends immediately. Instead, move your VPN to a "Fallback Only" state. If the ZTNA cloud has an issue, your users have a documented (and secure) way back in. Only after 30 days of zero "Inbound" VPN traffic do you decommission the hardware.

Mentorship: The Technoxi Difference

Migrating to ZTNA isn't a "Project"; it’s a shift in how your business operates.

Most vendors will offer to "Do the migration" for you. They’ll charge you per-user and leave you with a configuration you don't understand.

Our Cisco MINT (Mentored Install) program is built on a different philosophy. We work with your engineers through every phase of this roadmap.

• We help you perform the traffic audit and interpret the data.
• We show you how to build the ZTNA policies so you can manage them yourself on Day 2.
• We mentor you through the "Political" side of user comms and stakeholder management.

You don't just get a ZTNA deployment; you get the capability to manage a modern, edge-secure network.

For Cisco Account Managers: If your customer is still paying for massive VPN concentrators and complaining about latency, it’s time to MINT them into the future. Add SKU MINT-SECURITY-TNX to your CCW quote. This gives the customer our 4-Phase Roadmap and the direct mentorship of our ex-TAC engineering team.

Download the ZTNA Migration Blueprint or Take our Zero Trust Workshop to see the full architecture in action.

Is your VPN concentrator still at 90% load?

You don't need a bigger box; you need a smarter roadmap. What’s the biggest "fear" your team has about moving to ZTNA? Tell me in the comments—I’ve probably handled it before.

Tom Alexander CTO, Technoxi Ex-Cisco TAC | CCIE #7099 Building the borderless enterprise.