The way businesses manage remote access is changing. The days of struggling with legacy VPN appliances, complex key management, and manually distributing configuration files are over.
But the shift to “cloud-managed” tools often creates a major conflict for IT administrators: convenience versus control.
Do you sacrifice data privacy for the easy-to-use cloud dashboard? Or do you cling to complex on-premise setups to guarantee sovereignty?
At Jadaptive, we built Nodal VPN to solve this fundamental trade-off using a Hybrid Architecture.
The Great Conflict: Cloud Convenience vs. Data Control
Most modern SaaS companies manage VPNs in one of two ways, both of which have serious drawbacks:
| Model | Description | The Pain Point |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional On-Premise | A self-contained appliance (like our legacy LogonBox VPN) that you install, manage, patch, and update yourself. | Management Burden. High operational overhead, manual user key distribution, and no easy single pane of glass. |
| Cloud-Only VPN | The provider hosts the entire VPN stack, and all traffic is routed through their cloud servers. | Data Sovereignty Risk. Your sensitive network data leaves your infrastructure, creating major privacy, performance, and compliance concerns. |
Nodal VPN avoids both of these pitfalls by separating the two primary functions of a VPN system.
Understanding the Nodal VPN Hybrid Architecture
Our solution is defined by a clear distinction between the Control Plane and the Data Plane. This separation is the “Hybrid Advantage.”
1. The Control Plane (Cloud-Orchestrated)
The Control Plane is the “brains” of the operation. This is the lightweight part of the system that we host for you in the cloud.
What the Control Plane handles:
- Identity Management: Integration with your existing identity providers (Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace).
- Authentication & 2FA: User sign-in, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and applying security policies.
- Zero-Config Client Distribution: Automatically generating, rotating, and distributing secure WireGuard profiles to users’ devices.
- Policy & Orchestration: Assigning users to the correct network nodes and managing client statistics.
2. The Data Plane (On-Premise)
The Data Plane is where the secure network tunnel lives. This component runs entirely within your network boundary.
What the Data Plane handles:
- Network Data Traffic: This is the flow of all sensitive packets between the user and your corporate resources.
- WireGuard Tunnel: Running the actual, high-speed WireGuard protocol.
The most critical statement for your security and compliance:
Users authenticate in the cloud, but your network data remains solely on your infrastructure.
This separation guarantees that for organizations concerned with privacy, performance, and compliance, your sensitive business traffic never touches Jadaptive’s cloud servers.
Key Benefits for the IT Administrator
The Hybrid Advantage translates directly into three powerful benefits for your team:
1. Unmatched Security and Privacy
By keeping the data plane on-prem, Nodal VPN offers data sovereignty that is impossible with cloud-only VPN solutions. This satisfies the most stringent compliance requirements without demanding that you manage a legacy virtual appliance.
2. Automation and Zero-Config Management
Your team is instantly freed from manual key and certificate management. Because identity and policy are managed centrally in the cloud, users are automatically provisioned (and de-provisioned) based on their status in Active Directory or Entra ID. No more distributing config files.
3. A Future-Proof Framework
This modern framework allows us to add high-value features rapidly. Over the coming milestones, we will be rolling out features like multi-node High Availability (HA) and advanced device posture checks—capabilities that simply weren’t possible with our previous architecture
Ready to see how a hybrid, secure-by-design VPN can simplify management without sacrificing privacy?