Which is better for remote access, ZTNA or traditional VPN, and why?

For most modern remote-access use cases, ZTNA is the stronger choice because it grants narrow, per-application access that is continuously re-evaluated, rather than placing a remote device onto the full corporate network at the IP layer. This significantly reduces the attack surface exposed to a compromised device or stolen credential, and it scales more naturally to cloud and hybrid environments where "the network" isn't a single defined perimeter anymore.

That said, VPN still has legitimate niches: some legacy protocols or applications genuinely require full network-layer connectivity that per-application brokering can't easily replicate, and some organizations aren't ready to inventory every application well enough to define per-app ZTNA policies.

The general industry direction favors migrating toward ZTNA for user-facing remote access while reserving VPN, if at all, for narrow legacy cases that genuinely can't be handled another way.