Why Cloud Access Security Brokers Are Essential for Data Protection in the Cloud,

Why Cloud Access Security Brokers Are Essential for Data Protection in the Cloud

Why Cloud Access Security Brokers Are Essential for Data Protection in the Cloud

Organizations leveraging the cloud to support remote workers and expand their business infrastructure must protect their data at rest and in transit. Existing data protection tools need to be designed to handle this challenge. CASBs bridge the gap to deliver security management. This includes threat prevention, which thwarts cyberattacks by analyzing activity and using contextual information.

Authentication

CASBs or cloud access security broker use authentication to ensure that only authorized users are allowed to access your sensitive information, especially when it is stored in the cloud. They can also enforce the principle of least privilege, ensuring that only the minimum amount of data is transferred across your network. This is especially important if your organization relies on cloud service providers with multiple physical data centers or availability zones, as you will likely need to transfer data between them to ensure the optimal performance of your application.

Using behavioral analytics and threat intelligence, CASBs can provide insight into your organization’s cloud usage and identify potential security risks. They can alert and respond to suspicious activity in real time, allowing you to protect your information against malicious activities. They can also bolster your security posture by identifying and enforcing security policies in your organization’s unique environments.

CASBs can take the form of on-premises hardware or software or be delivered as a cloud service for greater scalability and reduced costs. They can either operate via a forward proxy to intercept traffic or through APIs that offer out-of-band security for data at rest in the cloud. They can integrate with firewalls, NGFWs, WAFs, and endpoint agents to analyze traffic, protect information, and detect threats. And they can import log data from the cloud, enhancing their ability to discover and enforce enterprise-specific policies for your entire security ecosystem.

Encryption

Protect sensitive data en route to or from any cloud application, sanctioned or unsanctioned, using encryption and tokenization. This capability is a vital defense against endless threat variations that cybercriminals create as they target SaaS applications like Slack, Confluence, Jira, etc. A conventional CASB solution fails to keep up with modern collaboration applications that organizations adopt quickly.

Protect against unauthorized exfiltration of data out of the organization by blocking proxies and stopping malware. CASB solutions can also detect and stop risky file sharing, protecting the organization from a potentially disastrous data loss incident. Classify, prioritize, and evaluate each cloud application based on its security risk level. CASBs also assess how the application is used, what types of data are shared, and identify misconfigurations that expose the organization to attack.

CASBs can also detect suspicious behavior patterns, using benchmarking and continuous traffic data to identify malicious activity. For example, CASBs can recognize unusual login patterns and flag them for review by security administrators. CASBs help organizations stay compliant in the cloud, whether they are a healthcare organization worried about HIPAA and HITECH compliance or a retail company concerned about PCI compliance. A CASB helps organizations comply with industry and government regulations by delivering visibility, automated remediation, and policy creation capabilities. A CASB is an essential tool to defend against the growing number of threats and to maintain compliance in the cloud.

Access Control

As the most sophisticated threats evolve, CASB solutions use advanced anti-malware, sandbox, and cloud threat intelligence (such as their research and third-party feeds) to detect attacks in progress or motion. Combined with automated policies tailored to specific cloud applications’ unique risk levels, these capabilities help you stop zero-day threats, ransomware, and other sophisticated attacks.

CASBs can also detect the presence of sensitive data in the cloud and on endpoint devices. This functionality is important because it helps you prevent data breaches by blocking or encrypting sensitive files before they are transferred to the cloud or downloaded onto an endpoint device. Moreover, CASBs can detect and block shadow IT — using unsanctioned or unapproved cloud apps — to prevent inappropriate file sharing and hamper productivity. They can then respond by automatically enabling or blocking the app or enforcing different access controls, such as document sharing and reducing detection surface area.

Finally, CASBs can ensure compliance in the cloud by enforcing security policies and protecting data on-demand, whether stored in the cloud or on endpoint devices. This can be particularly helpful for organizations that must adhere to strict regulations, like healthcare companies worried about HIPAA and HITECH, retail businesses concerned with PCI, and financial services firms concerned with FFIEC and FINRA.

Compliance

With the increase in remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs, plus the growing presence of unsanctioned employee app usage known as Shadow IT, organizations need a CASB to help monitor cloud application use, enforce security policies, and protect sensitive data contents. A CASB provides visibility into all third-party applications used by your employees and their devices, scopes redundancies, evaluates license costs, and gives IT granular control over which business apps can be used (and which ones cannot).

In addition to enforcing security policies, a CASB also delivers threat detection to prevent ransomware attacks and other advanced threats from accessing the organization’s data in the cloud. CASBs can identify malicious activity, determine which users are infected, and immediately remediate the situation.

Rather than taking a “block” stance on productivity-enhancing cloud services, a CASB solution should allow IT to say “yes” to useful business apps while governing access to and activities in those services. This could mean providing full access to a sanctioned suite like Office 365 to managed devices while allowing web-only email on unmanaged ones or enforcing a strict policy across a group of unsanctioned apps for which you want to maintain compliance. With visibility into sensitive content traveling to, from, and between the cloud and on-premises systems combined with cloud DLP, a CASB can help your organization maintain compliance even in highly regulated industries.

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How To Increase The Level Of Data Security Of Your Company,

How To Increase The Level Of Data Security Of Your Company

How To Increase The Level Of Data Security Of Your Company

With technology and software advancing every day and policies on privacy and protection constantly changing, keeping your data safe has become a top priority now more than ever. Safeguarding your company’s data is a heavy burden to carry on your shoulders, but there is a range of things you can do to ensure your company’s data is always safe and secure. Here are a few very helpful tips that will guide you on how to increase the level of data security of your company.

1. IT Company

It’s always advisable to collaborate with an IT company so that all your IT-related activities and responsibilities are taken care of by a separate organization. This reduces your company’s burden and thereby will enable you to redirect your resources to the company’s primary priorities. Make sure to collaborate with a reputed IT company that is well-versed in data protection and knows how to quickly and efficiently handle any breaches in data. The IT company you choose to work with should also know how to safely recover lost data and properly dispose of sensitive company information.

2. Role-Based Access Control

It is no surprise that the more people have access to certain information, the more likely that the information will get leaked. If your company has many employees, a smart move to protect your data would be to employ role-based access control. In this system, access to information is determined by one’s role in the company, meaning that not all information is accessible to everyone. For additional protection, use multi-factor authentication and thoroughly train your employees on security procedures. Doing so will restrict the number of people using and analyzing your company’s sensitive information.

3. VPN and Multi-Factor Authentication

Small businesses are increasingly using VPN and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure the highest possible level of data security for their organization. VPN technology prevents data within a network from being intercepted by third parties making it harder to hack than unprotected networks. MFA, also known as two-factor authentication, is an invaluable tool to bolster the existing defenses of VPN technology. When used in combination with MFA, VPNs provide a powerful defense against both intentional and accidental malicious access to sensitive information. If your business is a Cisco Firepower VPN Client by utilizing Cisco Firepower MFA, you can be confident that your corporate data is secure no matter where it’s accessed from or shared across the organization.

4. Strong Passwords

The first thing you can do to ensure increased security of data at your company is to set strong passwords. A strong password forms the basis of a good security system. Information found at https://www.passcamp.com/ emphasizes the need for password management and advanced protection at the company level. Any compromises at this stage in security indicate major issues with your overall security system. For all your systems and files, set foolproof passwords that aren’t easy to hack. This means that your passwords need to be long, non-generic, and complex. 

5. Cloud Computing

Another way to safely access and store your data is through Cloud computing. Cloud computing offers multi-level foolproof security that will enable you to keep track of your data’s safety. You can also choose to have additional layers of security implemented. Cloud computing gives you insights into user activity and file accessibility. This way you will have an idea of what data was accessed, when, and by who. Any changes made to the data will also be visible. In general, Cloud computing will save you a lot of time and money by preventing disruption and loss of data.

6. Back up your Data

A critical part of securing your company data includes backing it up. In the unforeseen yet not uncommon chance that you lose your data, it is crucial that you have another information source to turn to. Without important data on hand, the company’s ongoing operations may be disrupted. Data retrieval can be a lengthy and complex process, so it is always recommended to store your data elsewhere within a secure system.

These are some of the most important things you can do to ensure your company’s data security. If ever unsure of where to start, consult a professional who will give you expert advice on how to protect your company’s data. And be sure to keep our tips in mind for extra protection.

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Simplify Your Business Today With a Modernized Data Cloud System,

Simplify Your Business Today With a Modernized Data Cloud System

Simplify Your Business Today With a Modernized Data Cloud System

The shift to cloud computing integrated business models has been going on steadily for the past two decades. A study done by the International Data Group shows that 69% of businesses have already shifted and integrated cloud technology for their day-to-day business running. Dell research has also shown that the businesses that have invested in cloud computing. Big data and mobility enjoy a 53% increase in revenue as compared to their competitors. The numbers certainly point towards the increasing efficacy of cloud systems.

As the shift to cloud computing occurs, there is an increasing need to make sure that all the cloud systems are well integrated and that the data is easily accessible. With over 400 million SaaS data sets being compiled daily in cloud computer storage, data cloud systems offer the best solution to keep track, unify and monetize data.

With data cloud systems as efficient as the Snowflake Cloud system, organizations can be able to bring all their data sources together and have a seamless harmony and ease of access. This creates beautiful and seamless ecosystems within organizations and beyond them where they can access and share their data easily and also access data from other correlating organizations.

Benefits of having a data cloud system:

  • Ease of access to data: with a centralized data system, it is easy to access all of the collected data from public clouds and other platforms. Data consumers, data providers, and data service providers now have a chain of action where their needs are met or their services are consumed. The uses of this kind of data are extensively wide from market research to consumer patterns analysis and future weather predictions.
  • Easy data governance and security: with data cloud systems, you can be able to make sure that the consolidated data that you are collecting or using complies with the data privacy regulations as stipulated by GDPR and CCPA. Snowflake cloud systems are specially equipped with in-system data security measures such as data encryption that is always on while data is in transit and at rest. Snowflake data cloud system also complies with the relevant government and industry regulation: it is a FedRAMP Moderate authorized.
  • Increase your business growth: centralized data systems enable different members of your team to make data-driven choices. You can be able to run data-integrated applications that can best meet your customer needs and satisfy your business partners. On top of that, these data cloud systems on the snowflake data cloud can also be converted to be an additional source of income.

Get Connected With Snowflake Data Cloud Systems:

The new age of the digital revolution aims at making certain that information that aids business and social transactions can be accessed at all times and with ease.  With this unification in data cloud systems, ecosystems that support this idea are being established. Snowflake data cloud systems can support a variety of data workloads such as Data Warehousing, Data Lake, Data Engineering, Data Science, and Data Application.

With the unique architecture of snowflake, unlimited storage is available for real-time computing needs to any number of concurrent users worldwide. With the Snowflake Data Marketplace, businesses can offer and access data sets.  Businesses can also create versions of data marketplaces for their supply chains.

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