The explosion of cloud apps and bring-your-own-device policies has made it difficult for IT to oversee network use. A CASB solution delivers significant user visibility and automates threat alerts for improved security.
How do CASBs improve cloud security? CASBs sit between the organization’s users and cloud environments to automatically discover unsanctioned software-as-a-service (SaaS) usage or Shadow IT. They also encrypt data in transit and on storage to prevent eavesdropping and theft.
Security
As organizations rely more on the cloud, protecting the data that moves in and out of the organization’s network becomes even more critical. CASB solutions offer security capabilities to safeguard data in use, transit, and rest. They also help secure the point of connection between the network and the cloud. This is especially important as the threat landscape continues to evolve. Attackers are more sophisticated and targeted; small misconfigurations can lead to devastating breaches.
CASBs integrate with an organization’s existing infrastructure to monitor, detect, and remediate threats to sensitive data in the cloud. They are a critical part of the cybersecurity architecture and complement, rather than replace, traditional security solutions such as enterprise firewalls, web application firewalls, IDaaS, and secure web gateways.
CASBs allow companies to identify these risky apps and apply policies to restrict usage, limit sharing, or prevent uploads. They can encrypt files to ensure that only authorized users can see the contents.
CASBs also detect misconfigurations, such as when a user tries to use a personal email address to access a corporate account. This is a common technique attackers use to gain credentials for corporate applications to steal sensitive information or launch attacks. CASBs can alert administrators and help them correct these issues before they cause a data breach.
Compliance
With remote work and BYOD driving more users to cloud environments, CASBs provide visibility into user activity to help IT teams manage risk. This helps them create and enforce access policies that meet internal security standards and regulatory compliance requirements.
CASBs use a variety of detection and monitoring capabilities, including advanced threat prevention and data protection. They can scan for and prevent unauthorized cloud activity via stolen credentials or malware and alert IT teams to potential issues with their cloud infrastructure. This is achieved with UEBA, machine learning, dynamic and static threat analysis, prioritized scanning, and more.
In addition to protecting against threats, CASBs can enforce data loss prevention (DLP) policies across the enterprise network and in the cloud environment. This is done by sitting at the edge of the cloud environment and inspecting all traffic to and from corporate SaaS applications. CASBs can be delivered as a physical security appliance or as a SaaS solution, depending on the organization’s needs.
CASBs can integrate with an organization’s existing identity and access management (IAM) tools for greater functionality. This includes identifying shadow IT devices, allowing IT to review and approve device and user directories, and providing security controls such as access control, visibility, monitoring, DLP, encryption, and threat prevention.
Cost
As enterprises adopt cloud services, they must balance productivity-enhancing applications with security. CASB solutions provide granular visibility into how data is accessed and protected in managed and unsanctioned cloud apps. This allows businesses to safely enable time-saving, productivity-enhancing applications without risking sensitive data.
A key feature is the ability to identify misconfigurations that can lead to a data breach. CASBs monitor for changes to infrastructure configurations and alert administrators. They can also detect and prevent unauthorized devices and applications from being used in the organization’s cloud environment. This helps stop the loss of intellectual property, trade secrets, and engineering designs from being shared on unsecured collaboration or messaging tools.
CASBs also protect against phishing and malware attacks. They can detect attachments of phishing emails, block malicious software distributed via cloud storage and SaaS solutions, and enforce policies to block rogue applications from being deployed in the organization’s cloud environments.
Organizations evaluating CASB vendors should look for a solution to deliver against their specific use cases. Evaluate the vendor landscape, media coverage, and analyst reports to understand which vendors have a proven track record of preventing breaches and reducing costs. Choose a solution that offers security features such as shadow IT control, SaaS security posture management, advanced threat protection, and logging. Ensure the CASB supports your enterprise’s existing security and networking technologies so that you don’t have to add additional security layers, which can increase costs.
Visibility
CASBs provide clear visibility into activity in and around cloud environments and help organizations create and maintain user access policies. They also help detect and remediate SaaS misconfigurations that could leave data vulnerable to attack.
One of the major challenges in securing an enterprise’s cloud usage is that much of it occurs outside IT’s line of sight. This is known as Shadow IT, and it poses significant security risks. CASBs address this challenge by monitoring sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud applications, including unmanaged devices like personal smartphones and IoT sensors.
As the CASB discovers cloud applications and their traffic, it can create a security policy for each. This includes identifying the risk level of each application and determining whether or not to block it or allow access for specific users. It can then monitor and enforce those policies.
Additionally, a CASB can protect files in the cloud by encrypting them using a key controlled by the organization. This helps prevent unauthorized viewing of sensitive data. It can also scan for sensitive information in all files downloaded to the cloud and prevent the unauthorized exfiltration of that data by implementing DLP policies. This is especially helpful in a remote work environment. Employees often use cloud collaboration and messaging tools to share files with colleagues. A CASB can stop this by controlling sharing permissions or preventing file downloads.