A cloud access security broker (CASB) solution is an on-premise or cloud-based software that combines and enforces enterprise security policies when users access their company’s cloud applications. This can protect your business from unauthorized data access, upload or download by cybercriminals, malicious or negligent employees, and other threats.
Please assess its features and integrations by choosing the right CASB for your business.
Cost
When it comes to choosing CASB, you must carefully consider the features that are most useful for your business. This includes assessing whether it can help you achieve your Shadow IT, Identity Management, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) goals. Different CASB vendors offer various features, so you must compare them carefully to find the best one for your needs.
The main goal of a CASB is to protect sensitive information from being leaked or stolen. It combines multiple types of security policy enforcement into a single solution. This is done by ensuring that cloud service traffic complies with your organization’s policies before it reaches the network. Firewalls, malware detection, and authentication are all included in a CASB’s security stack.
A CASB’s value also stems from its visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud applications. This is critical because unsanctioned apps increase the risk of data being inadvertently transferred to unauthorized users and locations. Traditional data loss protection tools do not always detect this kind of activity.
A CASB should provide granular visibility into all cloud application usage, including the location and device used. It should also be able to block or restrict access to cloud services and the content within them. In addition, it should provide data-centric security through encryption, tokenization, and access control.
Features
A cloud access security broker (CASB) is an on-premises or cloud-based software solution that protects cloud-based applications and data from unauthorized users. It acts as a proxy between cloud application users and service providers to combine and interject enterprise security policies as employees access cloud-based resources. According to Gartner, CASB solutions improve visibility into cloud application usage and data while enforcing security policies, even for devices outside an organization’s network.
To select the best CASB for your organization, consider the features most important to your security team. You’ll want to choose a CASB that monitors all cloud apps—sanctioned and unsanctioned—and provides robust analytics. It should also be able to detect unauthorized activities and provide granular controls to balance safety with collaboration. Look for a CASB that integrates with your existing IAS and SSO systems. Finally, decide whether you want to deploy your CASB in forward proxy mode, reverse proxy mode, or API mode.
A CASB with advanced analytics helps reduce data loss by identifying suspicious and risky behavior. It can also alert security teams to rogue cloud services and protect confidential and sensitive data in the event of a data breach. In addition, it can help organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements. It also helps reduce the risk of data leakage by providing visibility into cloud usage, enforcing data security policies, and protecting data from insider threats and malicious attacks.
Integrations
If your organization is deploying cloud applications, finding the right CASB solution is essential. This solution can help you protect sensitive data in the cloud and eliminate blind spots. It can also provide visibility into cloud-based applications, devices, and users. It can even detect and stop sensitive data exfiltration. This can significantly benefit your business, especially if you want to reduce the risks of cloud security breaches.
Consider your security and integration requirements to choose the best CASB for your business. For example, you can integrate your CASB with your SSO and IAS systems. You may also need to decide whether to deploy your CASB in reverse proxy, forward proxy, or API mode.
CASBs are a critical piece of the security puzzle, as they provide visibility and control over third-party applications used by employees. This allows your information security team to enforce compliance standards, prevent unauthorized access, and address threats. Additionally, CASBs can identify risky apps by assessing user ID, device, location, and job function.
Unlike traditional firewalls, CASBs can inspect both managed and unmanaged cloud services. They can provide more flexibility than other security solutions, allowing IT to say “yes” to practical applications while enforcing cloud activities and data policies. This could mean, for example, allowing full access to a sanctioned suite while limiting other activities or enforcing a no-sharing policy across a category of unsanctioned applications.
Security measures
Cloud access security broker solutions protect data in motion and at rest by ensuring compliance with enterprise policies. They also prevent sensitive information from being exfiltrated by identifying and preventing malicious activity, such as malware and ransomware. They analyze real-time traffic, detect threats and abnormal behavior, and avoid cloud blind spots. They use various detection techniques, such as ML, AI, and predictive analytics, to provide continuous protection.
CASBs are security application points between the cloud service providers and users to combine and interject enterprise security policies into traffic, enabling organizations to protect against cyberattacks. They also offer visibility and control over cloud applications, including sanctioned and unsanctioned. CASBs can detect breaches, block viruses, and other malicious code, and prevent data loss through encryption and tokenization.
CASB solutions enable an organization to take an agile, flexible approach to security policy enforcement that balances accessibility with data security. They can integrate with an organization’s existing SSO and IAS systems and be deployed in reverse proxy mode, forward proxy mode, or both. They can also perform autodiscovery of cloud applications to identify high-risk applications, users, and other key risk factors. In addition, they can enforce several security access controls, including device profiling and encryption and credential mapping when single sign-on is unavailable.