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In a cloud computing environment, admins are tasked with provisioning instances to deploy IT infrastructure, build web applications and APIs, and so on. In a cybersecurity context, SECaaS refers to information security teams working alongside a SECaaS provider to deploy one or more security tools. By deploying these tools via the cloud rather than on-premises, organizations can take advantage of holistic yet granular security at a lower cost.
Typically, such a provider will run a security assessment to see which services would be required. To this end, organizations typically need to leverage multiple providers as there is a bevy of disciplines that all require different security experts to address. For example, a company that provides antivirus, malware, or phishing protection as a service may not also perform vulnerability scanning for application security.
There are many reasons why organizations are outsourcing their application architectures through SaaS in lieu of on-premises software. SaaS apps offer far greater availability and accessibility, no matter where users connect, because they’re accessed through the internet. They also offer lower upfront costs and simpler management because the vendor can continuously update them in the cloud. And critically, SaaS is scalable, so as you add users, you simply adjust your subscription.
Gartner, The Future of Network Security is in the Cloud
Security as a service offers similar advantages and even more:
Policies That Follow Users
Whether your users are working on the network in your headquarters, connecting in a coffee shop, or using airport Wi-Fi, they should have identical security and data protection. With a cloud service, your business policies follow users no matter where they connect. All connections are inspected and secured, no matter which user they’re coming from, the app being accessed, or any encryption protocols in use.
Improved Visibility
With cloud security, your organization gets real-time visibility into all of its traffic, applications in use, any compromised IoT devices, threats and policy violations blocked, and much more. Like a security information and event management (SIEM) solution, an integrated cloud solution gives you a centralized view of all activities across services—firewall, sandbox, secure web gateway, advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, bandwidth control, and more.
Fewer Vulnerabilities
Today’s bad actors understand that legacy security in the data center can’t protect these users, and attackers are increasingly targeting mobile users, and using mobile devices as a beachhead to attack enterprise environments. If you can’t secure every connection, you leave your entire network vulnerable to attack. Security as a service closes gaps in enterprise security created by off-net users and those connecting directly to cloud apps and the open internet.
Increased Scalability
Legacy network security models can’t scale, and they certainly aren’t agile. Changes are onerous and take much too long in the digital world. Cloud security, on the other hand, is near-infinitely scalable. It easily handles traffic spikes and inspects all traffic, even encrypted traffic, without impacting performance. You can add users, add services, and even add offices almost instantly. You never run out of capacity, as you do with appliances.
The legacy “data center as the center of the universe” network and network security architecture has become obsolete, an inhibitor to the needs of digital business. In this way, SECaaS provides a clear advantage, but there are still some challenges that come with it.
Security as a service technology provides unique capabilities that on-premises solutions don’t.
As Gartner pointed out in their report, The Future of Network Security Is in the Cloud, “The enterprise data center is no longer the center of access requirements for users and devices.” The report goes on to say that the networking and security model has effectively been turned upside-down from the time it was developed, a time when all users were on the network and all applications were housed in the secure data center. Today:
The traditional network forces all traffic through a centralized data center for security and access controls—a complex configuration that results in a terrible user experience. Cloud applications, such as Microsoft 365 and Workday, were designed to be accessed directly through local internet breakouts.
For hybrid workers, the experience is even worse, because they have to use a virtual private network (VPN) to have their traffic routed through the security stack on the network only to be sent out to cloud destinations.
In this model, you have to bring users to the security, while a cloud-delivered model brings security to the users.
Here are some of the security technologies that can be offered through the cloud as a service:
When browsing the market for effective cloud security, there are a couple of things to take into account:
The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ is a cloud native security platform that lets your organization enjoy a faster, more secure user experience on an enterprise-grade security cloud built on Gartner’s vision of a SASE architecture.
With more than 150 data centers globally, every office or user, anywhere, gets a fast and secure connection. The Zero Trust Exchange elastically scales to your users' traffic demands, even hard-to-inspect TLS/SSL. Zscaler processes more than 200 billion transactions at peak periods and performs 175,000 unique security updates each day. Any threat detected in our cloud is blocked for every other cloud user within seconds.
The Zero Trust Exchange:
Experience the world’s largest security platform built for the cloud. Sign up for a demo to see how Zscaler closes security gaps and expedites your cloud migration.
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