Top Features to Look for in a CASB Solution
A CASB is critical to ensure your organization doesn’t introduce or spread threats and malware via vectors like cloud storage services and sync clients. Look for a product that provides collaboration management, pre-configured SaaS tenancy controls, and other policy enforcement. The right CASB solution can provide visibility, device posture management, data loss prevention (DLP), UEBA, and zero trust.
Visibility
The ability to discover cloud apps and data and classify them based on business value or risk is critical. It helps enterprises identify potential shadow IT and provides visibility into unauthorized connections and data uploads. Visibility is also a critical security factor when it comes to preventing malware and threats that are centered around or originate from clouds. For example, employee negligence or lack of training often results in sensitive corporate files like engineering designs and customer sales records being shared publicly or downloaded by malicious attackers. CASB solutions, such as the one from Versa Networks, provide visibility and control to prevent this attack.
Similarly, many CASBs can prevent data leakage by encrypting cloud data at rest or in transit to make it unreadable to eavesdroppers and criminal hackers. This is particularly important for companies that want to comply with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOX regulations. Look for CASBs that offer field-level data encryption and other security functions such as ad blocking, threat prevention, and integration with identity access management (IAM) or single sign-on tools. This gives them the flexibility to support a wide range of use cases.
Flexibility
When sensitive information is moved to the cloud, it can be subject to many threats and leaks. Businesses need to have the ability to protect this information, especially when it comes to financial data. A CASB provides several security technologies to help safeguard this information. It helps identify the threat and reduce the risk of data leaks from the cloud. In addition, it monitors various files while sharing and keeps a check on the users within the cloud. CASBs should be flexible enough to support the deployment modes your organization needs today and in the future. For example, a CASB should be able to detect and prioritize business-critical applications over recreational apps, such as HD video streaming, when preserving bandwidth is essential. A CASB should be able to identify shadow IT applications and offer built-in threat score analysis. Similarly, a CASB should be scalable to support multiple environments, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments. It should also provide support for encryption of both data-at-rest and data-in-transit.
Automation
With BYOD, shadow IT, and other trends causing an ever-expanding network environment, it is difficult for organizations to monitor all the apps and devices used by their employees. A CASB makes enforcing policies across the entire corporate ecosystem more straightforward regardless of how users access data. CASBs can perform several cybersecurity functions, including blocking malware from entering the organization’s environment, monitoring user activity, and identifying threats hiding behind legitimate behavior. They can also encrypt data-at-rest and data-in-transit to protect files on mobile devices or in the cloud. They can use forward and reverse proxies to cover connections from the outside world into the corporate network or obfuscate endpoint information to prevent attackers from collecting information about a user. In addition to these security features, a CASB solution can provide identity access management functionality and integrate with existing solutions. They can scan and discover cloud applications, perform risk assessments, and provide single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. They can also help detect cloud licensing costs and identify functionality not being used to reduce overall costs.
Analytics
A CASB solution scans discovers, and performs risk assessments on cloud data and applications. This provides a deep level of threat observation that helps organizations detect public or external sharing of files, unauthorized access to sensitive data, and more. CASB solutions often work natively with secure web gateways, application firewalls, and data loss prevention tools to help strengthen security seamlessly without impacting employee productivity. The key feature you should look for is the ability to identify unsanctioned or “shadow” IT devices and unauthorized data usage within your organization. Ensure the CASB you select has a comprehensive app repository and can detect and categorize shadow IT apps by location, risk level, data sensitivity, etc. The CASB should also offer built-in risk score analysis and a centralized view of a user’s activity across all cloud services and devices. The CASB should also include advanced protection from various threats, including malware, ransomware, and data leaks. This is typically done using an integrated architecture combining log collection and detection capabilities, such as static and dynamic anti-malware and machine learning.
Integrations
With tool sprawl creating a blind spot for many IT teams, CASB solutions ingest event logs and threat intelligence from on-premises security infrastructure to identify and stop unauthorized cloud applications. They can also detect rogue tools on the endpoint, helping to prevent data loss and ransomware attacks. CASBs can also help with identity and access management by delivering integrations to existing IDaaS/single sign-on (SSO) tools. This gives enterprise IT managers a more granular, risk-based approach to authentication for cloud apps and stops attackers from gaining easy access to corporate data. Look for a CASB solution that offers built-in advanced security functions, including data loss prevention for data at rest and in motion, malware protection, real-time quarantine functionality, and user behavior analytics. The deployment model you choose will also impact the way a CASB can discover shadow IT and other threats. Select a multimode CASB that supports API control, forward proxy, and reverse proxy to ensure the best coverage of your business.