5 Key Features to Look for in a CASB Solution

As enterprises embrace cloud applications and the remote work era takes hold, traditional binary security tools no longer cut it. A CASB provides an agile approach to policy enforcement that balances access with data security.

Visibility, monitoring, threat detection, and prevention are the essential characteristics to look for in a CASB system.

Authentication

With the rise of remote work and bring-your-own-device policies, it’s become harder for IT to maintain visibility into data being used by third-party applications. A CASB solution should be able to discover these apps on the network, identify the organizational data they are accessing, and enable organizations to disconnect from risky or inappropriate apps.

As cloud environments expand, so does the attack surface for cybercriminals and digital adversaries. To combat this, a CASB should have malware detection, data loss prevention, encryption, information rights management, and tokenization capabilities to safeguard cloud data at rest, in motion, and in use.

With the rapid pace of business and productivity driven by cloud apps, security teams need to know who is sharing what with whom – especially as the data they are working on can contain sensitive information that bad actors can exploit. A good CASB should have collaboration management capabilities that regularly crawl files in sanctioned SaaS tenants to identify shared ones, check the users with whom they are shared, and automatically disconnect risky shares.

Monitoring

Organizations rely on CASB solutions to monitor sensitive data traveling to and from cloud environments and help ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. By combining visibility with threat detection and data loss prevention (DLP), organizations can reduce the likelihood of a security incident, identify incidents quicker and respond to them more effectively.

As CASB solutions have evolved, they’ve become more inclusive regarding the applications they support. This is critical given the proliferation of remote work, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, and unsanctioned employee app usage (Shadow IT).

When shopping for a CASB, look for a solution that supports your key cloud apps. You also want to ensure the CASB can distinguish between sanctioned SaaS tenants and unsanctioned instances of the same application. Lastly, select a vendor with strong customer support that can address your specific technical needs. This is especially important if your security team needs more technical experience. You can use media and analyst reports, testimonials from customers with similar security goals, and your internal research to determine whether a particular vendor fits you.

Enforcement

CASB solutions should also have enforcement capabilities to prevent threats from spreading within the organization. For example, a CASB solution can automatically block suspicious or malicious activity in a cloud environment or a specific device to protect data from harm. Alternatively, a CASB can encrypt or tokenize data to hide sensitive information from untrusted applications and users.

Additionally, a CASB solution should be able to discover and show the visibility of third-party cloud applications connecting to an enterprise’s internal systems. This helps reduce the risk of Shadow IT — or apps that are not managed and secured by IT but are utilized by employees — which can threaten the organization.

Finally, a good CASB solution should be able to integrate with core security infrastructure such as SIEM, network protection, DLP, endpoint protection, encryption, and user authentication. This enables organizations to leverage their existing security technologies to protect their cloud and SaaS environments. Evaluate potential CASB vendors by analyzing media coverage, and analyst reports to identify vendors that address your organization’s specific use cases.

Data Loss Prevention

A CASB solution is only complete with effective data loss prevention. It is a must-have feature for organizations that want to safeguard their information in the cloud. This includes protecting files shared in the cloud, on a remote device or on-premises system, and encrypting sensitive data between cloud apps.

This capability is particularly important for enterprises facing various security risks in the cloud, such as shadow IT, compliance non-compliance, and malware. It can reduce these risks by aligning cloud and on-premises security policies, enabling business users to use all the advantages of the cloud without compromising enterprise-owned assets.

CASB solutions provide the visibility to pinpoint anomalous behavior that could indicate malicious activity, such as downloading data from Salesforce at an odd hour or sharing data with an unapproved third party. They can also detect malware attacks attempting to steal critical data or disable IT systems in the cloud. The CASB solution can then apply ML-based threat protection, prioritized analysis, and crowdsourced intelligence to identify these attacks before they cause damage.

Threat Detection

With CASBs monitoring file movements across your cloud environment, you can detect and block unauthorized sharing and copying of sensitive data vulnerable to malware. This enables your security team to respond quickly to prevent damage and mitigate costly data loss incidents like ransomware.

This is especially important in a remote work environment where employees frequently transfer files to personal applications and devices, including cloud storage services. A CASB can help detect such malicious behavior by comparing current activity to normal patterns and using machine learning.

A CASB solution can also reduce the risk of Shadow IT, or applications and infrastructure managed outside an organization’s line of sight, with inline and out-of-band inspection of unmanaged devices. This helps ensure that your users have access only to the apps they need while ensuring that your data is secure. It can also identify rogue or compromised accounts and provide visibility into the cloud platform that protects your company’s intellectual property from unauthorized use. It can also prevent leaks of confidential information to external audiences by scanning for and encrypting sensitive data that is shared or downloaded from a cloud service.