Why CASB should be on your priority list while migrating to cloud

The global growth of cloud infrastructure has been explosive. The pandemic that promoted remote working models has accelerated the adoption of cloud infrastructure platforms and services exponentially. Migration to the cloud landscape has provided organizations with data storage, convenience of access, a reduction in infrastructure costs, and efficiency in team collaborations, among other benefits.

The dynamic work environment changes access parameters and boundaries, which in turn, requires competent security solutions. To mitigate security threats, a cloud access security broker (CASB) unifies security measures across the cloud providing visibility to make detection, management, and enforcement possible, all from a single security platform. While the use of a CASB in cloud security measures is on an upward curve, industry insights predict more rapid growth due to modernizing and adapting.

CASB deployment to address gaps in cloud security

CASB ensures an organization achieves data visibility into its cloud applications. The rate at which data is proliferating in the cloud is exponential, so much so that organizations are challenged with keeping up. Because of the exponentially increasing amount of data, cloud security solutions need to adapt to the evolving threat landscape.

Security tools, such as SIEM and DLP, have been constantly updated and developed for organizations to mitigate threats and protect their data. However, preventing malicious advanced data threats against privileged users demands a sophisticated tool that could work as a standalone or be integrated in the existing cloud security premise. CASB evolved from being a specific solution to curb shadow IT concerns to providing multifaceted cloud security functions.

These core functionalities explain how cloud security is promoted by CASB in an organization's cloud:

Visibility

From an IT perspective, it is important to know who is using cloud services and how the data is being used. It is no surprise that organizations with many employees access numerous applications across multiple cloud environments. When cloud use is beyond the view of IT, official data is no longer protected by a company's risk and security mitigation policies. According to this report by McAfee, an average company uses 975 unknown services and applications on the cloud.

With little to no knowledge about which applications are in use, by whom, and for what, IT teams combat the issue of shadow IT. Shadow IT is the use of applications, services, software, and other systems without the approval of the IT team of an organization. Due to this perimeter-less environment, data visibility is substantially reduced. A CASB solution provides visibility into a company's cloud usage which ultimately helps safeguard users and data. For example, cloud discovery analysis provides insights through risk assessment so professionals can decide the appropriate level of access to grant different users.

Compliance

Businesses must comply with regulations that govern the data privacy and security of an organization, irrespective of whether any or all of their systems and data storage is outsourced to the cloud. CASB helps organizations meet cloud compliance requirements through policies and regulations like HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and others. This can be accomplished, for example, by enforcing policies that ensure only authorized personnel gain access to sensitive data. In addition, CASB can detect high areas of risk when it comes to compliance and provide help to the IT team to address and resolve them.

Threat protection

CASB is able to create a comprehensive view of user patterns and behaviors to help detect anomalous user behavior. Attacker or insider actions, malicious or unintentional, can be involved in data leaks or confidential data theft that greatly affects an organization. CASB using user and entity behavior analytics technology mitigates the risk of stolen data. On the other hand, CASB is able to make use of other capabilities, such as adaptive access control, malware analysis, prioritized analysis, and threat intelligence, specifically against malware when the threats appear from external cloud services and applications.

Data security

The convenience of team collaboration and efficiency over distance brings with it a potential heavy cost for businesses to pay if cloud usage is not configured and protected. DLP solutions are designed to safeguard data, however they don't provide much support for cloud scenarios. DLP provides considerably less coverage for cloud security than a sophisticated CASB solution.

CASB promotes data security in the cloud through:

• Access and collaboration control
• Information rights management
• Tokenization
• Encryption

Collectively, a combination of on-premises DLP solutions and sophisticated CASB provides visibility into how sensitive information travels, from, to, and within the cloud.

CASB in cloud landscape

Cloud security is clearly a necessity rather than a luxury. As data production, storage and sharing increases, organizations have a heightened need to invest in competent cloud security solutions. CASB helps ensure security functions are easier for cloud infrastructure platforms and services, and saves time and resources so they can be dedicated to other important functions in an organization. Due to its enhanced data visibility, support for cloud compliance regulations, threat detection and protection features, and promotion of data security strategies, CASB is your best go-to solution for protecting your users, network, and data.