Are you relying solely on a firewall for security? Is it the same firewall that everyone has been using for a few years? Don’t you believe with everything migrating to the cloud, some cloud-based security solution is required?
To leverage the benefit of cloud-based solutions, one must balance supporting access and protecting critical data. Cloud App Security Broker is one such mediator.
What is Cloud App Security Broker (CASB)?
CASB acts as a gatekeeper who regulates the access between your enterprise users and the cloud resources they use regardless of geographical location and user devices. It safeguards your cloud services and resources by enforcing security policies. It identifies a security gap in cloud use by monitoring and controlling user activities and sensitive data. It can be easily integrated with SaaS, IaaS, & PaaS.
One of the most popular CASB is Microsoft Cloud App Security.
Why do you need a CASB?
A CASB is required to monitor your cloud services and apps. Shadow IT discovery and app governance are its widely used use-cases. If your organization is using VM (Virtual Machines), cloud-based storage, and network resources, CASB will help you in regulating and securing your environment.
It improves security by:-
- Discovering and providing visibility on app use
- Monitoring user activities for anomalous behavior
- Giving better control over your resources
- Preventing critical information leak
- Assessing compliance of cloud services
How does CASB help?
CASB provides a wide range of capabilities to secure your environment in various aspects that are as follow:
A. Visibility:
- It scans all the services and assigns them risk ranking.
- It keeps track of users and third-party apps which can log in.
- It investigates the usage pattern and assesses the risk levels.
B. Data Confidentiality and Security
- It classifies information as sensitive or non-sensitive and controls the exposure of sensitive information.
- It responds to classified labels on content accordingly.
- Provides an automated process to apply control in your apps in real-time.
C. Protection against Threat
- It provides an analysis of user and entity behavior.
- It helps in mitigating malware & ransomware by detecting unusual behavior.
- It offers adaptive access control.
- It detects compromised users and rogue applications.
D. Checking Compliance
- It provides tools such as dashboards and reports for better governance.
- It assists in checking regulatory compliance requirements and industry standards.
- Protects against data leaks to non-compliant apps
Cloud App Security architecture
Cloud App Security provides the following components to integrate visibility:
A. Cloud Discovery
It identifies your environment and the application that your organizations are using. This process uses traffic logs to discover the apps dynamically. You can also upload log files manually from firewalls and proxies to create a report of the organization’s cloud usage.
B. Sanctioning and Un-sanctioning Apps
You can use Cloud App Catalog present in cloud app security to sanction or unsanctioned apps. Microsoft Cloud App Security has a catalog of over 16,000 cloud apps ranked on industry standards. You can rate your application on industry standards, regulatory certificates, and best practices. These scores let you know how risky your app is. A detailed list of risk factors is also available in it.
C. App Connectors
App connectors help you in integrating cloud app security to other cloud apps. A Cloud app administrator grants permission to Cloud app security to access the app. The Cloud App Security gathers activity logs and scans the data, accounts, and cloud content. After such thorough analysis, cloud app security enforces policies, detects threats, and provides necessary governance actions for resolving the issue.
Cloud App Security uses cloud service provider’s APIs that come with their own set of limitations (like throttling, API limits, and dynamic time-shifting API windows). The Cloud app security engines utilize the allowed capacity to gather required data.
D. Conditional App Access Control
It uses reverse proxy architecture to have real-time visibility and control over access to tasks performed within the cloud environment. Data encryption rules are determined here. It also gives you insights about unsafe endpoints.
E. Policy Control
You can use policies
- To define users’ behavior in the cloud.
- To detect risky behavior and violation
- To look for suspicious data points
- To lay out remedial action to mitigate the risks.
Cloud Migration is at a high pace. However, you need to take care of potential security risks. It will help you in getting ahead of everyone in the game. There is nothing more dangerous than an unsecured cloud application as it is highly exposed. So, Cloud App Security is much more of a necessity than a booming tech-invention.
For more information, reach out to us at contact.us@virtuetechinc.om