Cloud computing is making business easier in may ways, from customer service to internal communications, by making data instantly accessible from any location or device. But making your vital data accessible to vendors, employees, and customers also makes it more accessible to hackers. How can you take advantage of cloud convenience and rapid access to information while keeping sensitive data safe? Your firewall is your first line of defense against hackers, but that alone can’t protect you fully. You need a cloud access security broker or CASB to extend your company’s data protection into the cloud. Find out how a CASB can help keep your data safe.
Detecting Abnormal User Behavior
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One of the best features of a good CASB is that it detects anomalies and alerts you to potential issues. Your CASB will alert you if a user suddenly starts downloading a lot more data than usual, which allows you to determine whether that activity is project-based or if it represents a compromised user login or malicious insider. Your CASB will also notice if a user logs in simultaneously from two different geographical locations or attempts to log in multiple times with the wrong credentials. And with it comes to privileged users, or those users with administrator privileges, a CASB can detect instances where they abuse their privileges and put corporate data at risk.
Provide Compliance Data
Beyond auditing user behavior, your CASB should be able to monitor and report on other aspects of compliance with your data security policies. Your policies should clearly cover who, what, when, why, and where you grant access to your sensitive data. Once you have a clear policy in place, your CASB can enforce those policies. If a policy violation does occur, you will be notified of the violation, and an automatic remediation action will be triggered to keep sensitive data from falling in the wrong hands.
Prevent External Threats
A CASB solution is designed to recognize malicious attempts to access your data. Your CASB will watch for suspicious devices, hosts, and locations. Your system will also watch out for users who behave suspiciously, whether that means they’re using an outdated system, trying to bypass security protocols, logging in with zombie credentials, or accessing the system from a compromised account.
Provide Data Security
Keeping information safe means encrypting sensitive data, whether it’s on your in-house system or stored in the cloud. It’s also necessary to make sure that files and content don’t become orphaned as users shift over time. Your CASB brings data loss prevention and eDiscovery capabilities into your cloud-based storage systems.
Minimize Risk
A solid CASB solution provides multiple layers of functionality to minimize your data risk. A good system can help you evaluate cloud services and determine which ones meet your security and compliance requirements. It can prevent sensitive data from being uploaded into the cloud, and it can encrypt and tokenize the data that you do choose to upload. If someone attempts to misuse your cloud service, your CASB can identify that activity. You can even set up your system to enforce different levels of access and functionality based on the user’s device or location.
Losing customer data in a malicious attack is a serious risk that can damage your business’s reputation and your client relationships. If your company is making use of cloud-based storage systems and software solutions, you should look into what a CASB system can do for you.