What Is CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)?

They are also particularly useful to organizations that have shadow IT operations or allow users to procure and manage their own cloud environments. That is because CASBs can collect data that is useful not just for security but also for monitoring the usage of cloud services for budgeting purposes.

CASB benefits can be split into four pillars (or functions) that keep organizations' cloud services secure: 

Organizations must have visibility into user activity across their cloud applications, including on sanctioned and unsanctioned applications, known as shadow IT. A particular risk of cloud usage is activity that takes place beyond IT’s line of sight because the organization’s data is no longer covered by its compliance, governance, and risk policies. So, CASBs are crucial to identifying this high-risk behavior that IT teams may not see.

A CASB solution provides the comprehensive visibility of cloud application usage, such as device and location information, to help organizations safeguard data, intellectual property, and users. It also provides cloud discovery analysis, which enables organizations to assess the risk of cloud services and decide whether to grant users access to applications. This allows the organization to establish more granular control over their cloud environments by providing different levels of access based on a user’s device, location, and role within the business. 

Organizations face an ever-increasing threat from outside hackers through stolen credentials and insider attacks. As such, companies must be able to detect and prevent suspicious behavior, including that of authorized users.

CASBs enable organizations to specifically protect against insider attacks from authorized users by creating a comprehensive regular usage pattern that can be used as a comparison point. Using machine-learning techniques, CASBs can then detect unusual activity as soon as a user gains improper access or attempts to steal data. They also use technologies and techniques like adaptive access control, dynamic and static malware analysis, and threat intelligence to block and prevent malware attacks. 

Organizations now have a wide range of cloud supplier options and likely use several different vendors for various solutions. However, organizations remain responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance around the privacy and safety of their data, regardless of whether they outsource services or manage it themselves.

CASBs help organizations ensure compliance with the increasingly stringent, constantly evolving requirements of data and privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). CASBs also play an important role in meeting the security requirements of ISO 27001 and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Using a CASB solution allows organizations to pinpoint the compliance risks they face and understand what they need to do to address those risks. Some compliance capabilities that CASBs provide include:

• Automated remediation
• Reporting
• Policy creation and enforcement

By maintaining controls and documenting activities, CASBs enable organizations to achieve their compliance objectives.

Organizations must ensure they protect their sensitive data even as cloud usage continues to increase and while implementing data loss prevention (DLP) tools. On-premises DLP solutions are effective in protecting data but cannot extend that protection to cloud services. 

Organizations therefore must combine a CASB application with their DLP tool to gain visibility of sensitive data moving between and across their on-premises and cloud environments. This enables organizations to monitor user access to confidential information, regardless of where it is on their network. Through a combination of features and technologies like access control, collaboration control, DLP, encryption, information rights management, and tokenization, organizations can minimize the loss of corporate information. 

1. To govern cloud applications: CASBs provide a centralized view of an organization’s cloud environment, which helps them understand which users are accessing which applications, where they access them from, and the device they use to do so. CASBs also rate cloud services’ risk level and trustworthiness, as well as automated access controls and data permissions, which is crucial to governing cloud applications.
   
2. To defend against cloud-based threats: CASBs monitor suspicious activity, such as excessive logins, and use anti-malware and sandboxing technology to analyze and block potential threats in the cloud. As the sophistication and volume of cloud-based attacks increase, it is vital for organizations to understand the behavior and characteristics of the cloud threats they face and quickly respond to them.
   
3. To secure sensitive data: CASB solutions enable organizations to detect and remove the sharing of sensitive data outside their networks. They can also set policies that ensure only authorized users can access certain types of data.
   
4. To ensure cloud compliance: CASBs are a crucial tool in helping organizations meet increasingly stringent data and privacy regulations. They provide automated remediation, reporting capabilities, and policy creation and enforcement required to comply with industry and government-led mandates, rules, and standards.
   

Choosing a CASB solution is reliant on finding the right service that meets the organization’s requirements. Organizations must set out their needs and the goals that a CASB will help them to achieve. They then must research their options by compiling insights from cybersecurity analysts, carrying out reference calls with providers, and perform a detailed proof of concept.

When selecting a CASB, organizations should look for a dual-mode solution that incorporates both API-based and inline capabilities including:

• Centralized visibility: a single pane of glass for discovering and managing all cloud services and applications 
  
• On-premises and cloud management: the ability to apply separate security policies and routing for in-office and remote connections
  
• Simplified compliance: automated policy enforcement with the appropriate reporting to manage legal and contractual requirements
  
• User and Entity Behavior Analytics: monitoring for abnormal user access and activity that indicates a potential security incident
  
• Access and entitlement management: granular access controls across both network and applications
  
• Data Loss Prevention: sensitive data detection to prevent users from sharing it outside the organizations
  
• Advanced threat protection: the ability to block malware from being uploaded or downloaded from SaaS applications and quarantine suspicious files