A CASB provides visibility into how an enterprise’s cloud apps are used. This includes sanctioned and unsanctioned applications.
It is essential to find a CASB solution that offers granular security policies. This will help prevent data breaches and protect your organization from cyber threats.
CASBs are designed to minimize IT risk by automating policy-based control of cloud apps. This is something that traditional security tools cannot do.
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CASB Enables Visibility
CASBs give organizations visibility into cloud applications and environments employees, partners, and customers use. This is important because many unsanctioned applications can access sensitive data not governed by the organization’s security policies. Unsanctioned apps can also be a vector for attacks, such as malware or phishing. With a CASB, businesses can prevent these threats by identifying and quarantining rogue or suspicious apps.
In addition, CASBs can detect data leaks and enable policies to protect sensitive information. For example, a CASB can help ensure that files shared from a business’s account don’t contain confidential or proprietary information. It can also limit access to data stored in an organization’s bucket, protecting against breaches caused by small mistakes like leaving a bucket open.
A CASB’s threat protection capabilities include detecting and blocking malicious activities in the cloud, such as ransomware. They can also prioritize using business-critical applications over recreational (although sanctioned) ones, preserving bandwidth.
A top CASB solution also has a broad range of deployment models to allow flexibility for varying cloud access scenarios. This includes a SaaS model that provides the following:
- Quicker deployment and comprehensive coverage.
- A reverse proxy is ideal for devices outside the purview of network security.
- A forward proxy offers inline controls in real-time.
CASB Enables Control
CASBs can help businesses prevent breaches and malware from spreading to sensitive data in the cloud. These tools are critical to an organization’s security infrastructure and are designed to augment existing threat prevention and antivirus solutions. They provide visibility and control for unmanaged cloud apps, a significant risk to most enterprises. A CASB solution can help organizations discover these unauthorized applications and make recommendations for how to address the issue.
Additionally, a CASB can protect files and systems from malware by encrypting them at the file level before they reach the cloud. This prevents attackers from decrypting files and gaining access to sensitive information. CASBs can also monitor cloud storage for abnormal behavior, allowing administrators to detect ransomware or rogue application usage that can threaten an organization’s data.
Finally, a CASB can enable business agility by reducing the risks associated with Shadow IT. This is a growing challenge for IT teams, as employees use cloud apps without the organization’s knowledge. CASBs can reduce the risk of shadow IT by providing a view into what applications are used and enabling policies to limit their use.
When evaluating CASB vendors, looking for features that align with your business needs is essential. For example, a CASB should offer granular authorization capabilities such as two-factor authentication and risk-based access control. It should also support managed and unmanaged devices and allow for secure remote work.
CASB Enables Compliance
A CASB helps to solve the challenges of data breaches, compliance, and visibility created by the migration to cloud applications and the proliferation of BYOD devices. It enables organizations to enforce their security policies across all the devices used to access cloud applications, even those not managed by the corporate network. The solution also enables enterprises to control their data in the cloud by performing inline and out-of-band inspection of cloud apps. It provides granular visibility on what is being shared inside the corporate network.
The key to choosing the right CASB solution for your business is understanding your unique needs and use cases. Then evaluate the CASB vendor landscape and leverage media coverage, analyst reports, and client references to identify vendors that best meet your specific requirements.
Look for a CASB that provides comprehensive visibility of all the SaaS applications in your organization, including shadow IT. Also, choose a solution that enables you to detect the exfiltration of sensitive information to public audiences and supports granular policies based on the user’s device, location, or department. Also, look for out-of-the-box capabilities like user entity and behavior analysis (UEBA) that correlate login usernames with the user’s AD identity to detect anomalies and stop data leakage.
Consider how easily a CASB can be integrated with your existing technology infrastructure. For example, a CASB can import logs and secure web gateways to help with real-time threat detection and integrate with endpoint solutions for more visibility and more profound protection.
Also Read: Benefits of Digitizing Your Small Business
CASB Enables Security
A business must establish its cloud security needs to determine which CASB is the best fit. This can be done through detailed POCs, research from cybersecurity analysts, or reference calls with peers. It is vital that a CASB solution can be tailored to fit an organization’s specific needs and that it can expand as the business grows and its cloud usage expands.
CASBs help to protect the enterprise from data leaks by enforcing corporate policies on cloud apps. They detect unauthorized access and prevent breaches by spotting anomalous activity like login attempts from unusual locations, spikes in traffic flow, and other indications of malicious or accidental behavior. CASB solutions can also protect data in motion and at rest by performing credential mapping, device posture profiling, malware detection, encryption, tokenization, and logging.
Despite the many benefits of cloud applications, they can pose security risks for a business. CASBs help decrease the risk of shadow IT by allowing organizations to see the entire list of cloud applications used by employees and how those apps are being utilized. This enables them to find applications that directly conflict with internal or compliance standards and then take the necessary steps to correct this behavior.