Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) have been hot for the last 5 years. But how do you select a CASB?
It has gotten to the point where every firm is either using one, evaluating one, or studying how to use them. This makes sense, since any successful cloud transition strategy should including appropriate attention being placed on how to secure, control and manage corporate use of cloud services.
We believe by 2020, 100% of large firms will use CASB and the majority of mid-sized firms will as well.
Since the market is so hot, the CASB firms themselves are acquisition targets and there has been quite a bit of M&A activity in this space. There is also room for innovation and there are many new entrants into the market, so expect many more changes in offerings available to the enterprise.
CASB products provide capabilities that give control over cloud offerings. They protect data, provide proof of compliance with corporate standards and regulatory requirements, provide visibility into actions being taken by staff and metrics over cloud application use and performance. In short, CASB enable appropriate enterprise-grade governance over cloud services.
CASB provide this governance over both SaaS and IaaS solutions. For example, Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps Suite, CRM, HRIS, ERP, but also social media accounts. CASB can provide control and visibility over AWS and Microsoft Azure use.
If you are evaluating CASB for your enterprise we recommend considering:
We track each of these in our Disruptive IT Directory in the category of Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB).
Many of the large IT providers have bought CASB capabilities and may have an integrated offering that fits with your legacy approach. They include Oracle (bought Palerra), Microsoft (bought Adallom), Cisco (bought Cloudlock), Symantec (bought Blue Coat, who had bought Perspecsys and Elastica), and as previously mentioned, McAfee (has bought Skyhigh).
There are other CASB related capabilities in platforms like Palo Alto Networks, but we consider those to be more of an add-on. These can be a good option of you are already leveraging a platform and can just add on a capability from an exiting vendor, so one option is to check with your current provider to see if their offerings include capabilities in this space.
If you have questions in CASB, remember, we love to hear from our readers. Use our “Ask The CTO” feature.
For more on the CASB concept see: