For most organizations, concerns of Security and compliance hamper the adoption of Cloud applications. Therefore, it is really no surprise that the cloud access security broker (CASB) market is currently booming. Gartner predicts that by 2020, around 85% of large enterprises will use a CASB. They are quickly appearing as a must-needed security solution for organizations wanting to adopt cloud-based applications.

What exactly is a CASB?

Simply put, CASBs are a category of security tools which help organizations safely enable cloud apps as well as mobile devices. They work by intermediating traffic between cloud apps and users.

A CASB can be deployed as either as an on-premises offering or as a cloud-based gateway. Physically, a CASB has to be located in one of two places: a corporate data center or in the cloud itself. Not only can a cloud access security broker monitor traffic going to and from a cloud application, but it can also detect possible threats.

Key Functions of a CASB:

CASBs have a wide range of functions, to include four key ones:

• Visibility – A key function of a CASB is to give network administrations visibility into all cloud usage within an organization
• Threat Protection – CASBs can provide information on threat intelligence and malware protection.
• Compliance – CASBs can impose control to ensure cloud usage meets specific industry regulations.
• Data Security – Besides compliance, CASBs enforce corporate security policies in order to control access to sensitive data and also to ensure that data is properly encrypted.

An important part of a CASB strategy are cloud data protection platforms. These platforms intercept data going to the cloud by using software servers, which sit behind a firewall. The software will then encrypt the data before going to the cloud. This type of solution allows organizations a way for cloud adoption, but also keeping their sensitive data in their hands.

The CASB Market

As mentioned before, the CASB market is gaining traction. According to a report by Gartner, a CASB is a “required technology” for any organization using multiple cloud services. The report further elaborates that there are three reasons influencing enterprises to consider using a CASB:-
1. More employees are using mobile devices to store corporate data in cloud services, which means IT security lack control over this activity
2. As cloud adoption heats up, more organizations are thinking strategically about the security aspect of the cloud
3. Large organizations are migrating their data to the cloud and are looking into securing this data.

It will be interesting to see what direction the CASB market will take and how far it can grow.

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