Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses were moving their assets to the cloud. Once the shutdowns happened, the cloud became vital to keeping business operations going while employees were forced to work from home.
50% of small and mid-sized businesses said their use of the cloud was higher than expected so far this year due to the pandemic.
Increased reliance on cloud computing and the cloud adoption needed to make it through the pandemic has left many Sudbury businesses now looking at a cloud infrastructure that may have gotten away from them.
Cloud security and integration of cloud applications are top concerns for companies. Shadow IT poses a serious data security risk and has been on the rise. Companies have also had a hard time enforcing consistent security and login policies across different types of cloud platforms.
Without a centralized control center, credential theft and compliance differences can cause serious and costly problems for a business.
Keeping a consistent cloud security structure across multiple cloud applications is what a cloud assess security broker (CASB) was designed to do.
The more cloud applications a business uses, the more complex their data security and application environment gets.
A small business with 50 or less employees uses as many as 40 different cloud applications in their workflows.
What a CASB does is give you one place to oversee all the cloud applications your company uses and ensure their security by monitoring access, applying data loss prevention policies, and more.
Here are several advantages of adding a CASB, like Microsoft Cloud App Security, to your cybersecurity strategy.
Some of your files are more sensitive than others, so having a system in place that can classify a document for a specific protection policy can help you prevent unauthorized sharing of confidential information.
This can be done through a system in Microsoft 365 called sensitivity labels, but how do you ensure a file keeps those protections as it travels through other cloud apps?
Microsoft Cloud App Security can force security policy adherence across various 3rd party applications. This means that a “do not copy” or encryption policy will be recognized and picked up in all your cloud apps, increasing document protection.
Hackers go where the data is, and right now that is largely in the cloud. A CASB can protect cloud accounts from being infected with malware or compromised by an insider attack through continuous monitoring.
A CASB has the ability to detect unusual behavior across your cloud environment to identify and stop:
The CASB can also deploy automated remediation tactics to keep your accounts from being breached.
Shadow IT is a problem that’s been growing. It’s projected that it will account for approximately 1/3 of security breaches this year.
Shadow IT is when employees use technology, typically cloud applications, without the clearance of their company. Often, it’s done innocently, with employees just using apps they like and not realizing the security consequences.
If a company doesn’t know all the apps that its data is being stored in, then it can’t protect it or ensure that an app doesn’t have security issues.
Microsoft Cloud App Security can detect the use of shadow IT by users and assess the risk of a particular cloud app. It has a database of over 16,000 SaaS apps and more than 80 risk factors that it uses to access apps for security risk.
If your business has to comply with data privacy regulations, like the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), it’s important to know if the cloud applications you use meet compliance requirements.
A CASB can assess whether or not your apps meet the necessary compliance requirements that your firm is subject to. It will also help to prevent data leaks to apps that aren’t compliance by restricting access.
Once a user gets past login security, Microsoft Cloud App Security can give you control over how they can interact with certain data. This is done through session control, which is officially called Conditional Access App Control.
For example, if a user is logging in from a personal mobile device (which could potentially be connected to an unsecure Wi-Fi), you can restrict the ability to download data from a particular app.
With so much data now being stored in the cloud, it’s vital to put controls in place for security, such as a CASB. Our team of experts can walk you through the process and tell you exactly how it will benefit your business.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation! Call 705-222-8324 or reach out online.