Cloud Access Security Broker: What You Need to Know

Tech Digest Correspondent Cloud
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A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is an intermediary security checkpoint between users and cloud-based applications. Its primary role is to oversee and implement all data security rules and procedures, including encryption, alarms, and authentication. By monitoring user behavior, the CASB ensures that only authorized users are accessing and using an organization’s data across endpoints.

CASBs provide a combination of preventive, monitoring, and mitigation strategies that safeguard an organization’s data. They can alert administrators to potentially dangerous conduct, prevent the installation of malware or other risks, and identify potential compliance issues. They can also examine the organization’s firewall or proxy logs to gain a deeper understanding of cloud application usage and spot unusual behavior.

The Pillars of Cloud Access Security Broker

CASB solutions were initially created to respond to Shadow IT. However, over time, they have evolved to encompass four pillars:

  • Visibility: Employees at large companies may access a wide variety of cloud environments and applications. Currently, business data is not subjected to the company’s risk, governance, or compliance requirements when cloud usage is hidden from IT.
  • Compliance: Organizations can outsource and use the cloud to manage their storage and systems, but they are still in charge of adhering to the laws controlling the security and privacy of their company’s data.
  • Data Security: The introduction of the cloud has largely eliminated the obstacles prohibiting successful remote cooperation. The seamless data transfer can be advantageous, but can also be quite expensive for organizations that want to safeguard private and sensitive data.
  • Threat Defense: Employees and outside parties possessing stolen credentials can steal private data from the cloud, whether via carelessness or malicious purpose. CASBs can assemble a thorough perspective of typical usage configurations and utilize it as a foundation for comparison to help identify aberrant user behavior.

Uses of CASB

A CASB is used to ensure enterprise security requirements for cloud data and hazards. To achieve this, a three-step process is typically followed:

  • Discovery: The CASB uses auto-discovery to identify all third-party cloud services and their respective users.
  • Classification: After identifying the extent of cloud usage, the CASB determines the application, the type of data it contains, and the sharing method to assess the risk level associated with it.
  • Remediation: The CASB uses risk assessment to create policies for the organization’s data and user access to meet its security requirements. Additionally, the CASB may use this information to implement automatic responses to any violations.

Advantages of CASB

CASBs assist in providing enterprises with far greater visibility on how data is used across the cloud ecosystem, including cloud users, services, and apps. They are made to assist enterprises in defending themselves from the security risks and flaws found in a cloud. For instance, a properly built CASB can lessen the danger of Shadow IT, which refers to infrastructure and applications used and controlled without the IT department of the company’s awareness.

Given the transition to an agile DevOps software paradigm, shadow IT is becoming an increasing concern for many enterprises. According to this paradigm, developers frequently use their personal accounts to create workloads. Since they frequently are not appropriately secured and are reachable using configurations and default passwords that are easily exploited, these unauthorized assets pose a threat to the environment.

A CASB gives the company visibility into such situations and can make automated suggestions for how the IT staff should handle such problems.

Tech Digest Correspondent