Cloud computing offers flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. However, it comes with a set of challenges, particularly cybersecurity. As organizations increasingly migrate their data and operations to the cloud, they face a growing need to secure their cloud access and protect sensitive data from various potential threats. This is where a CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) comes into play.
CASB plays a crucial role in modern cybersecurity, tackling the particular security issues of cloud computing. It acts as a sentinel, monitoring the gateways between user devices, networks and cloud services and ensuring that data remains protected beyond the traditional perimeter.
At its core, CASB is a specialized security solution designed to fortify cloud security. It serves as a vital bridge connecting on-premises security measures with cloud-based services. This ensures that organizations can seamlessly extend their security policies and controls into cloud environments. It operates as an intermediary between cloud service providers and end-users, giving organizations granular visibility and control over their cloud-based activities.
CASB solutions come in various forms, offering a range of features and functionalities. These solutions can be deployed as on-premises appliances, cloud-based services, or hybrid models, depending on organizations' specific requirements and preferences.
Regardless of the deployment model, the primary goal of CASB is to enable organizations to safely and securely leverage cloud services while maintaining the highest data protection and compliance standards.
One of CASB's fundamental roles is to enhance cybersecurity within cloud environments. As the adoption of cloud services continues to grow and cyber threats become more advanced, the need to secure cloud access and data has never been more critical. A CASB serves as the front line of defense, actively thwarting cyber threats in the cloud.
Preventing Data Breaches: A CASB helps organizations prevent data breaches by monitoring data in transit and at rest in the cloud. In 2023, 39% of organizations surveyed experienced a data breach in their cloud environment, making cloud data security a top priority. CASB enforces encryption, access controls, and data loss prevention policies to ensure that sensitive information is not compromised.
Protecting Against Insider Threats: Insider threats pose a significant risk to organizations. In 2023, the average company surveyed had 1 out of 6 employees share company data with their personal email account. Even worse, 90% of companies have former employees who accessed assets stored in SaaS applications after they left the company. CASB solutions employ advanced behavioral analytics to detect unusual user activities that may indicate insider threats. By identifying and mitigating these risks, CASB enhances overall security.
Adapting to the Evolving Threat Landscape: The threat landscape in the cloud is continually evolving. Cybercriminals employ new tactics and techniques to infiltrate cloud environments. CASB solutions stay up-to-date with the latest threat intelligence and leverage machine learning algorithms to effectively detect and respond to emerging threats.
Understanding the architecture of CASB solutions is essential for organizations looking to implement this technology effectively. It typically consists of various components and features that work in unison to provide visibility into cloud usage, enforce security policies, and detect and respond to threats.
CASB solutions offer different deployment models to suit organizations' needs:
Cloud access security brokers that are based on APIs have two different types of API architecture they can utilize: pull-style APIs and push-style APIs.
Pull-style API-based CASBs poll the cloud service at intervals to check what has changed since the last time it checked. It then reviews those changes, decides whether any of the events are relevant to its programmed security policies, and applies the policies.
Polling intervals vary greatly across pull-style API-based cloud access security brokers, ranging from minutes to hours to days, and even weeks. The longer the interval, the farther from real-time your CASB’s awareness of the changing attack surface and possible threats becomes. MTTD and MTTR increase,
Additionally, when the cloud service uses a SaaS model, pull-style APIs can fail in pulling all the relevant changes because of rate limitations on the SaaS API. This is especially true when the CASB is trying to poll the SaaS application at frequent polling intervals, measured in seconds or minutes.
Push-style API-based CASBs do not poll the cloud service. Instead, the cloud service pushes notifications of change events to the CASB. As soon as the CASB receives the event notification, it can review and implement relevant security policies.
Push-style APIs enable the CASB to have near-real-time awareness of the changing attack surface and to react quickly to potential threats. And because they do not need to poll the SaaS application in order to get the information, they do not run up against its API rate limitations.
The four pillars of CASB functionality are a framework created by Gartner to use in evaluating cloud access security brokers. The pillars in the framework are:
If you don’t know it’s there, you can’t defend it - or defend against it. CASBs should give visibility into:
Your company’s important data should stay within the purview of your company. CASBs should make sure that your data is not exfiltrated, copied, shared or otherwise exposed through:
Threats to your cloud security can come from external sources, such as cyber attacks, phishing scams or malware, or from internal risks, such as disgruntled employees or negligence. CASBs should detect and respond to:
Almost any organization is subject to data regulations like the GDPR, and all the more so for heavily regulated industries like finance. CASBs should support your compliance initiatives by:
CASB is often compared to SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) in cloud security. While both technologies address cloud security, they have distinct focuses and capabilities.
Organizations should consider their specific requirements when deciding between CASB and SASE:
Adopting a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) offers many benefits and positive outcomes for organizations navigating the complexities of cloud security.
CASB addresses complex cloud environments, data protection, shadow IT, compliance, user access management, threat detection, integration, cost-effectiveness, user experience, and scalability.
As organizations continue to the cloud, CASB remains a critical guardian of cloud security, reinforcing the importance of securing cloud access and data in the digital age. By leveraging such solutions, organizations can embrace the benefits of the cloud while safeguarding their most sensitive assets.