Third-party contractors are critical for many organizations. They bring specialized skills, help scale projects quickly, and support both short-term initiatives and long-term business needs. Yet contractors also introduce unique security and operational challenges. Whether it’s a quick project or a multi-year collaboration, enterprise IT teams need a secure way to provide access to corporate resources without driving up costs.

A secure enterprise browser offers a practical way to achieve these goals, offering a cost-efficient Zero Trust solution that makes managing contractor access both easier and safer.

The Dynamic Nature of Contractor Relationships

Short-Term Engagements
Imagine a marketing consultant hired for a few months to help with a product launch. They need immediate access to SaaS tools like Salesforce, Google Workspace, or HubSpot. Traditional onboarding – which might involve VPNs, shipped devices, or agent installs – can take days or weeks, which is impractical for a short engagement.

Long-Term Projects
On the other hand, consider a contract software developer working with your engineering team for 18 months. They require sustained access to dev tools, source repositories, and cloud environments. It’s critical during that period that their access remains appropriate as projects and responsibilities shift.

Constant Change
Contractor relationships are dynamic: new hires start, others move to different projects, and roles evolve frequently. Static, perimeter-based security models simply aren’t designed for this pace of change.

Why Zero Trust Is Essential

Contractors typically sit outside the corporate directory and use devices that are beyond the enterprise’s control.  Traditional models assume trust once users are “on the network,” with no visibility into the user’s actions or their device’s security posture.

A Zero Trust approach requires continuous verification of identity, device posture, and context. Enterprise browsers make this possible by applying access and security controls directly in the session, regardless of device or location.

Business and Security Challenges with Contractors
  • Onboarding and Offboarding Delays
    VPNs, VDIs, and endpoint agents take time to set up and tear down, and shipped devices mean lost productivity and added costs. And if contractors aren’t deprovisioned promptly, organizations risk “orphaned accounts” with lingering access.
  • Device Management Gaps
    Contractors often use their own laptops or devices. Without IT oversight, these endpoints could be compromised or out of compliance, raising the risk of data leakage and malware spread.
  • Visibility and Accountability
    Without the right tools, it’s hard to know what contractors accessed, downloaded, or shared. Auditing and compliance become major pain points.
Benefits of a Secure Enterprise Browser

An enterprise browser addresses all of these challenges and gives organizations the confidence to bring contractors on-board without compromising security. Here are the top benefits.

  1. Fast, Frictionless Onboarding
    Instead of provisioning VPNs or shipping managed devices, the IT team simply sends the contractor a link to download the secure browser. They gain instant access to SaaS and internal apps, without the IT overhead.
  2. Zero Trust at the Point of Access
    Security controls are enforced within the browser session, which can be recorded for additional validation. Organizations can block risky actions like copy/paste, downloads, or screen capture, and tailor access policies to specific users.
  3. Built-In Visibility and Audit Trails
    All activity is logged, making it easier to demonstrate compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2.
  4. Cost Savings
    Compared to expensive VDI setups or procuring and shipping devices, enterprise browsers are leaner and easier to scale. They also reduce the number of separate security agents required, lowering both cost and complexity.
Limitations of Legacy Approaches

Until enterprise browsers entered the scene, the options for granting access to contractors were limited to a few sub-optimal options:

  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
    Provides strong control but is costly, resource-heavy, and delivers poor performance for SaaS.
  • VPN + Endpoint Agents
    Familiar technology, but difficult to manage across unmanaged contractor devices. It also expands the attack surface by placing external users “on the network.”
  • Shipped Devices
    Expensive and an administrative burden. Creates security and logistical headaches around provisioning, tracking, and retrieving equipment when a contractor moves on or the engagement ends.

Organizations will always have a need for third-party contractors, so they need to be prepared for the dynamic security and operational challenges introduced by these engagements. A secure enterprise browser gives organizations a faster, safer, and more cost-effective way to onboard contractors, enforce Zero Trust policies, and maintain visibility over sensitive data – without the overhead and other complications introduced by alternatives.

 

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