Digital Transformation, Cybersecurity, Cloud Apps, and Cloud Security

By Ben Rice VP Business Development at Bitglass

What you see in the title is what we covered in our latest webinar, but what part of it is really important? All of it? Some? Or is it all just marketing blather that can be ignored? The truth lies in the middle – we are all adopting more cloud in our personal lives, whether we like it or not. Every time we buy from Amazon, we give it data about us and we support their business model, which is distinctly cloudy. Same for us as businesses – when we buy services from AWS we support the continued growth of cloud. The takeaway here is that most, if not all of our data will soon be stored off premises.

Consequently, protecting data became that much harder since it is no longer stored on a system you can physically control. With that being said, it is critical to know who has access to the data, what is being done with it, which devices are being used for access, and where the data ends up. In order to know, organizations would need a number of different technologies. As such, modern application usage involves a heavier reliance on nimble cloud based security solutions to handle this new dynamic cloud world.

Cloud Security begins with a change in the mindset around what the perimeter is – from a static frontier guarded by a firewall to a dynamic edge that includes remote workers, mobile devices, and applications hosted outside the organization. In order to establish this new edge, an enterprise would need IDaaS (Identity as a service), a CASB (cloud access security broker), CSPM (cloud security posture management), SIEM (security information & event management), zero-day endpoint protection, a SWG (secure web gateway), and more. IDaaS can authorize the right users from your organization that are allowed to have access to specific cloud applications and data. Adding a CASB secures the data and works in tandem with the IDaaS to make sure policies are enforced – leaving only authorized users to be able to gain access. Additionally, CSPM can ensure that any resources hosted in IaaS (infrastructure as a service) are protected from misconfigurations that can lead to accidental exposure. You can complete the picture by aggregating data from your new perimeter with SIEM.

To learn about how to ensure a safe IT ecosystem through integrated cloud security, check out our webinar below on Ensuring a Safe IT Ecosystem.