What Are the Benefits of CASB?

A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) enhances security by providing visibility into cloud usage, detecting shadow IT, and enforcing access controls. It protects sensitive data through encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), and threat detection while ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

Stanislav Krajcir

19.12.2024

5 min read

Additionally, CASBs strengthen identity management with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC) to prevent unauthorized access.

How CASBs Work

CASB solutions give organizations the visibility and control they need to enforce security policies, manage their data, and protect against threats in cloud environments. 

The CASB functionality is typically broken down into four main pillars:

1. Visibility: Track cloud usage across the organization, both sanctioned and unsanctioned applications (shadow IT). This includes a comprehensive breakdown of the cloud services used by each employee, as well as how and when they are used.
2. Data Security: Monitoring how data is being shared across the cloud and implementing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) measures such as encryption or masking. CASB enables organizations to identify the sharing of sensitive information to unauthorized users or via unsafe applications.
3. Threat Protection: Malware detection and identifying suspicious activity that could be a sign of compromised accounts. Implementing intelligent, adaptive-based protections based on contextual information to increase security without affecting the experience of authenticated users.
4. Compliance: Enabling organizations to meet data and privacy regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and others. By monitoring data traffic to and from the cloud, CASBs allow you to enforce these regulations and track the data needed should you be audited.

When put into action, CASB can be deployed as an inline solution, using an API-based method or through a combination of both (multimode CASB). 

These two CASB architectures offer different advantages, with inline methods enabling flexible real-time monitoring of data in transit and API-scanning allowing CASB to track data at rest, stored on cloud services.

Regardless of the architecture, CASB can be broken down into three main processes:

1. Discovery: Compiling a list of all the cloud services in use and their associated users.
2. Classification: Assessing how data is used and shared by different applications and determining the risk associated with each.
3. Remediation: Developing policies for each cloud service based on its security requirements. Identify and remediate any future security policy violations.

Key CASB Benefits for Businesses

Here are the key benefits of CASB:

#1. Finding Shadow IT

Shadow IT is when employees utilize unsanctioned cloud services without approval or configuration from the IT team. It poses a serious security risk, as employees can unknowingly put sensitive business data at risk by using applications that lack proper security controls.

CASB provides the visibility needed to see users accessing unsanctioned cloud services. By identifying previously hidden threats, IT teams can solve the problems posed by shadow IT by blocking access to high-risk applications or implementing new security policies to ensure protections remain in place.

#2. Advanced Data Loss Prevention Mechanisms

Top CASB products provide sophisticated DLP mechanisms to protect against unauthorized access and identify risk before a breach has occurred. This includes:

• Digital fingerprinting
• Incorporating contextual information such as user activity, location, device, etc

This helps CASB tools categorize and monitor data in use across the cloud environment, both in transit and at rest.

#3. Granular Access Controls

Detailed access controls allow you to restrict access based on a range of factors (user identity and role, device security, application risk level, etc.). Even implementing dynamic controls to react to session behavior changes and identify suspicious activity.

These controls enable organizations to align data access with a zero-trust security model, where users have the minimum permissions required to perform their role, and each request is verified.

#4. Simplified Compliance

With security controls and monitoring defined by the relevant regulations, you can simplify remaining compliant while utilizing cloud services. CASB also offers:

• Automated reporting for potential violations
• Audit logs and access records for compliance audits

#5. Cost Savings

The visibility into your cloud usage, provided by CASB, offers a number of cost-saving opportunities:

• Centralized IT admin and the consolidation of cloud security capabilities into a single platform.
• Optimizing licensing and ensuring you only pay for the cloud services you require.
• Mitigating the risk of data breaks and their potential costs.

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Overcoming CASB Limitations

While there are many CASB benefits, it also has limitations:

• Challenges ensuring visibility as new cloud services become available.
• Complex configuration and deployment, especially for larger organizations with extensive cloud usage.
• Focused security solution that only considers threats from cloud services.

CASB can be deployed as a standalone solution. However, to overcome these limitations, it is often integrated with other security frameworks, such as a secure web gateway (SWG) or a comprehensive Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) approach.

A secure web gateway provides some of the same functionality as CASB, including malware detection and DLP, except it monitors internet traffic rather than focusing on cloud services.

In contrast, SASE offers an all-encompassing unified approach to cybersecurity, combining CASB and secure web gateway functionality with Firewall-as-a-Service, Zero Trust Network Access, SD-WAN, and more. SASE brings all the protections of traditional legacy infrastructure into the modern world with complex cloud workloads, increasingly sophisticated attack vectors, and higher stakes when things go wrong.

Benefits Beyond CASB with Check Point’s SASE

Check Point’s SASE delivers workspace security with fast network speeds in a single cloud-based platform. 

Schedule a demo to learn how Check Point’s SASE unlocks superior user experience, full-mesh connectivity, and simplified operations.