5 BUSINESS CHALLENGES A CASB SOLVES

Security conscious businesses turn to a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) to better protect their data in the cloud.  If your business uses any cloud applications for collaborating or storing data, a CASB is critical for minimizing the challenges associated with operating in the cloud.  A CASB allows for visibility and control over the access of your cloud sharing applications. If you store data in cloud applications such as Microsoft Office 365 or Dropbox, a CASB can help to keep your cloud data secure.  A CASB can help protect your business with many cybersecurity challenges including these 5 common concerns.

1. Restrict Unauthorized Access

Existing security solutions such as firewalls are not sufficient to protect your data in the cloud. However, many businesses use the cloud for storing data that employees can access via their personal laptops, shared workspaces, or home offices. By allowing for data to be accessed in the cloud from multiple locations, the risk of data getting in the wrong hands is more likely.  The information stored in the cloud is not protected by many on premise security solutions.  A CASB secures and monitors the information within the cloud, better protecting your business from unauthorized access.

2. Identify Account Takeovers

As a result of weak passwords, phishing attacks, poor authentication controls, or other malicious activities, unauthorized users can gain access to your authorized account.  This is called an account takeover. Without proper tools to monitor behaviors that occur within the cloud, it is difficult to detect when an account takeover has occurred. Using a CASB will monitor activity that occurs in the cloud and can automatically revoke access from a suspicious account.

3. Internal & External Data Access Controls

An advantage for your business to use a Cloud Access Security Broker solution is that it monitors behavior within the cloud infrastructure, not just around the perimeter. A CASB enforces zero trust security: trusting no one, whether that access is internal or external.  This allows for your security team to be able to see who is accessing what information, for how long, and in what cloud app.  Having full visibility minimizes risks of your organization’s cloud data getting in the wrong hands.

4. Cloud Phishing & Malware Threats

Phishing and other malware threats can occur within cloud apps. A hacker would post a malicious link or document within a cloud app such as google drive or Drop Box and file share the link to people in the organization.  Once one person clicks on the link, it could cause data to leak from all over the organization.  In many cases, the link would give the hacker access to the user’s account, allowing them to perform more phishing attacks from that user’s account. This can end up doing more harm, allowing the hacker to gain access of critical information from high level employees. These links do not, however, do any harm until they are clicked on.  A CASB can better detect suspicious links within a shared document because it constantly monitors for risks within the cloud. They will even monitor links posted by people within your business, implementing zero trust.

5. Integrate CASB into DLP

 Many companies have already invested in DLP solutions that address many channels, including storage, email, endpoint, and others. They are looking for a seamless way to extend their solutions to the cloud as the workforce is adjusting to working from home. With a CASB, DLP can be seamlessly integrated across all channels, ensuring effective coverage and simpler operation. Aurora can get you connected with the cloud security solution that is right for your business. Our Aurora team help you integrate your CASB with your DLP solution with Symantec.

Symantec’s CASB solution can deploy consistent DLP policies on-prem and in the cloud. It should be able to leverage your existing, finely tuned DLP policies, workflows, and business logic to cloud apps and services. This avoids disparate or inconsistent results as you enforce DLP across multiple channels. It also reduces operational overhead, avoiding having two teams managing DLP, along with the efforts to replicate policies and workflows.

CASB can gain optimal performance through native cloud APIs.    While some have suggested using ICAP with on-prem DLP detection technology to preserve policies, this approach introduces a significant waste of WAN bandwidth and added latency. Instead, a CASB 2.0 solution should leverage cloud-based detection along with a native API to the CASB solution, so that content that is stored in the cloud is also analyzed in the cloud, avoiding shuttling content back and forth to on-prem. A native API solution also enables the sharing of rich attributes between the CASB and the DLP systems, such that traditional DLP solutions can leverage cloud-specific attributes for analysis and policy creation.

Additionally, it can empower DLP with CASB Insights. It should infuse traditional DLP solutions with cloud-specific information. For example, it should enable DLP to leverage additional attributes that are unique to the cloud when creating policies, such as “unshare a link.” Similarly, detailed user activity in the cloud or user threat scores can be shared through the DLP console. The end-goal is to empower the DLP specialists to have complete visibility and control of the functions relevant to them through a single console.

If you’d like to learn more about how Aurora can integrate CASB into your existing DLP solution, contact us at sales@aurorait.com.