A CASB solution offers security teams granular visibility into cloud app usage. Moreover, it helps identify unsanctioned apps and monitors unusual behavior that might lead to a data breach.
The solution also helps prevent unauthorized access by encrypting data at rest and in transit. It also provides threat prevention functions that detect and mitigate threats automatically.
Cost-Effectiveness
Threats and data breaches are everywhere, so this is why you need CASB security. A CASB solution can provide a cost-effective way to protect cloud applications, data, and users. A CASB solution helps to identify unauthorized or suspicious activities and provides security capabilities like authentication, access controls, and encryption to prevent data leakage. In addition, a CASB solution can also help to enforce and extend enterprise data governance and compliance policies.
With the growing adoption of cloud-based applications, traditional network firewalls can no longer secure the flow of information into and out of cloud apps. As such, CASB solutions have become essential for businesses. CASB solutions can be deployed in API mode, reverse proxy, or in-line (via a VPN client or endpoint protection). They offer rapid deployment and comprehensive coverage across a variety of cloud services.
Defend Against Threats
The collaborative nature of cloud applications allows employees to share and work on files without the knowledge or authorization of IT teams. CASBs use UEBA to verify that user behavior is consistent with known patterns and behaviors, and they can proactively limit or revoke access to a file or service when it’s not in compliance with security policies.
A CASB can also monitor files in sanctioned applications to detect sensitive data sharing, and they can automatically encrypt files on a device or in the cloud to prevent unintended sharing with harmful parties. CASBs can also scan and analyze the data context to protect against malware and ransomware.
Flexibility
Detecting and blocking unsanctioned apps from cloud-based applications is a crucial feature of many CASB solutions. This helps organizations improve visibility into their cloud environments and the users accessing them. This allows them to identify security risks that may arise, such as a sudden increase in traffic flow or users from unfamiliar locations. CASBs can also help companies reduce the risk of a breach by assisting them in enforcing policies, such as ensuring data is always encrypted when traveling between cloud-based applications and the enterprise network.
While mitigating threats from Shadow IT was an initial use case, it quickly became apparent that CASBs would be vital to any cloud security strategy. As more and more data moved to the cloud, protecting the movement of data (by limiting sharing privileges) and the content (through encryption) became even more crucial. This shift also altered the threat landscape, with malware becoming more pervasive and sophisticated. At the same time, small mistakes – like opening an AWS S3 bucket to the public – have the potential to cost millions.
To address these challenges, CASB solutions are designed to protect all content in motion, at rest, and in storage, regardless of where it resides. They also enable IT teams to monitor and manage BYOD and remote work by delivering granular security controls. These capabilities include cloud application discovery, visibility and control, security policy enforcement, threat protection, and analytics.
Visibility
Many organizations have a growing number of unmanaged cloud apps on their network, often referred to as shadow IT. These unsanctioned applications can be a significant risk to security, governance, and compliance, so IT teams must have visibility of these activities. This is where CASB solutions come in, with the ability to identify high-risk activity and provide granular controls to stop malicious activities such as ransomware.
Visibility is the core capability of a CASB solution, and your CASB provider must offer this feature set. Initially, CASBs were designed to discover unsanctioned or unknown services that weren’t part of the company’s approved list of tools. This is a great benefit, but IT teams want more than discovery. They need a way to classify these apps and understand what data they’re accessing, which is why some CASBs offer a service called community trust ratings.
Beyond identifying unsanctioned applications, the best CASBs will allow you to control activities in sanctioned cloud apps. This means allowing a tool like Dropbox for business but blocking it for personal use or limiting how much data can be shared with external parties. This is better than simply taking a sledgehammer approach of completely blocking an app, as it allows you to minimize risk and protect sensitive data.
Compliance
With CASB solutions, you can see all the cloud apps and data used on your network—sanctioned and unsanctioned. This lets IT teams manage to bring your device (BYOD) and remote work policies by applying granular security controls to prevent unwanted access. In addition, CASBs also offer threat detection capabilities such as unified endpoint assessment and protection (UEBA), risk rating, advanced analytics, cloud DLP, SaaS security posture management, forensics, and more.
CASBs enable enterprises to comply with GDPR and PCI DSS regulations through policy awareness, data classification functionality, and other features that protect against unauthorized sharing within and between sanctioned cloud applications. They also help organizations benchmark security configurations against constantly evolving regulatory requirements.
Sophisticated methods, like exact data match and indexed document matching, allow CASBs to detect sensitive content traveling to, from, and between the cloud and on-premises environments. This enables IT teams to apply granular policies that ensure compliance with standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and more. For example, CASBs help protect against ransomware attacks by analyzing encrypted traffic to identify unusual behavior and blocking access or alerting users. They also encrypt sensitive content in transit, preventing attackers from using unencrypted data to enter your organization’s infrastructure and steal critical business information. They do this by encrypting the contents of a file before it leaves the corporate network—whether traveling to the cloud, between clouds, or back on-premises.
