What is a CASB? Why You Need to Pair it with a SaaS Management Platform

At the dawn of SaaS applications, when employees began to realize that these new types of apps allowed them to work more flexibly and productively, they started to use them without internal approval. This shift introduced new security risks and heightened the need for data security.

For a time, people thought that the firewall and/or gateway they had in place would also protect their information in the cloud. Some even thought that the cloud app vendor was taking care of data security for them.

The truth is that these measures are not sufficient for cloud data security. Thus, the cloud access security broker (or CASB) was born.

Let’s dive into what CASB is (and isn’t) and why you should be combining it with a SaaS management platform.

What Is A CASB?

Gartner defines cloud access security brokers (CASBs) as “on-premises, or cloud-based security policy enforcement points, placed between cloud service consumers and cloud service providers to combine and interject enterprise security policies as the cloud-based resources are accessed. CASBs consolidate multiple types of security policy enforcement. Example security policies include authentication, single sign-on, authorization, credential mapping, device profiling, encryption, tokenization, logging, alerting, malware detection/prevention and so on.”

In simpler terms, CASB sits between your cloud applications and users, and gives insight into cloud application use across cloud platforms, identifies unsanctioned applications (or shadow IT) and provides insight into their riskiness. Is this sounding familiar? It should. Some of CASBs core functionality centers around shadow IT discovery, as well as monitoring web activity and bolstering security. 

CASBs act as a gatekeeper, allowing organizations to extend the reach of their security policies beyond their own infrastructure. 

Why Organizations Need a CASB

As organizations are increasingly moving to the cloud and doing “everything-as-a-service,”  maintaining visibility and control in these environments is essential to meeting compliance requirements, safeguarding your business from attack, and allowing your employees to safely use cloud applications.

A CASB provides a wide breadth of functionality, including solutions for data loss prevention, incident detection, granular control of permissions, and more. This allows organizations to maintain visibility, control, and compliance as their data moves, protecting company data from cyber attacks and data breaches. 

The long-short of it: CASB plays a key role in keeping your organization secure and compliant when employees are using cloud software tools.

CASBs are Only a Partial Solution, SMPs Complement Them

Oftentimes, IT teams think a CASB can do the job of a SaaS Management Platform. The reality is that they can’t. However, it’s not an either-or situation, it’s an ‘and.’ 

Today, employees are increasingly working from home or in a hybrid environment, using a simple Internet connection and managed and unmanaged devices. This shift has created challenges for CASBs because their technology foundation assumes that employees are on the company network, and the company has visibility into their network traffic. Employees often inadvertently circumvent CASBs by accessing applications from a personal device, keeping IT in the shadows.

Even with such security solutions in place, organizations are still faced with numerous challenges when many SaaS software tools are being used by employees. CASBs are a great tool for security, but it doesn’t provide IT with full transparency into your organization’s tech stack, leaving your sensitive data vulnerable and SaaS spend unmanaged. Together, CASBs and SaaS Management Platforms provide enhanced security, discovery, and oversight of your business applications.

Working hand in hand with a CASB like SkyHigh, Palo Alto or Netskope, Zylo is able to give you the coverage you need to ensure you have top notch cloud strategy:

• Additional SaaS discovery source: SaaS inventory management is the bedrock of SaaS Management. Another source to discover new SaaS applications and uncover the risks within your tech stack – regardless of where or how they’re purchased.
• Spend forecasting based on actual history.
• Renewal management: Never get caught on your heels.
• Vendor management: Establish a system of record for your cloud providers to get full visibility to everything you’re spending and using with each supplier as well as the contact information for the ever-changing team you work with from the vendor.
• Utilization visibility: Know which applications are being used and which ones are just taking up space (and money). See who has access and actual usage alongside app spend figures for each individual employee. Bonus: Licensing (actual usage numbers!) for your most strategic partners.
• Stack optimization: Understand spend and use across a categorized compilation of all of your cloud apps to discover redundancies and areas of optimization.
• Employee feedback: Initiate feedback surveys through email or Slack to ensure your employee’s voice is heard when making purchasing or renewal decisions

While there’s some overlap between a SaaS Management Platform and a CASB, their unique strengths enable them to multiply the strengths and value of the other. IT leaders require the right suite of tools to manage IT operations. Pairing a SaaS Management Platform like Zylo with a CASB allows you to drive your cloud intelligence strategy with enhanced insights and security. 

Request a demo to learn how Zylo can help you optimize your cloud strategy today.