Table of Contents
- Summary
- Market Categories and Deployment Types
- Key Criteria Comparison
- GigaOm Radar
- Vendor Insights
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About Jamal Bihya
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
An ever-increasing number of organizations are moving data and applications to the cloud; however, concerns regarding this approach remain—in particular, the perceived loss of control over who is doing what, when, and where. On the one hand, the economic arguments are appealing, but on the other, operational challenges may be daunting.
A product that can reduce the inherent risks of the cloud, while enabling flexibility and elasticity and lowering operating costs, can become the cornerstone of an organization’s cloud-first strategy. A cloud access security broker (CASB) platform can help achieve this goal.
Discovering, monitoring, tracking, and managing access to cloud applications enables organizations to quickly identify and mitigate potential cybersecurity risks to corporate information assets. A CASB platform aims to:
- Act as a firewall to identify malware and prevent it from entering the enterprise network.
- Authenticate users’ credentials and ensure they access only appropriate enterprise resources.
- Serve as a web application firewall (WAF) to thwart malware designed to breach security at the application level, rather than at the network level.
- Act as a data loss prevention (DLP) mechanism to ensure users can’t transmit sensitive information outside of the corporation.
Vendors offering a CASB solution include pure cloud-native CASB players, traditional IT product manufacturers who are extending their offerings to CASB solutions, and managed, cloud, and network service providers who are looking to capture a share of this growing market. The solutions vary from CASB as a feature to CASB as a component of a larger security platform.
This GigaOm Radar report highlights key CASB vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating CASB Solutions,” we describe in more detail the key features and metrics that are used to evaluate vendors in this market.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.