A lot of organizations hesitate when thinking of going to the cloud with all its benefits and the challenge of keeping an organization safe, perhaps because the thought of losing control over some many aspects at a security level.
In this blog, you’ll learn how Microsoft Cloud App can help your organization get the full benefit of cloud apps and services, supporting access while maintaining control to protect critical data.
Cloud App Security
Microsoft cloud app security is a cloud Service and a key component of the Microsoft’s cloud Security strategy, licensed by the Microsoft 365 E5 License, that provides better visibility of cloud activities, enables visibility of shadow IT, also enables risks, enforce polices, investigating suspicious activities and stopping threats. By doing so, it gives organizations the comfort level of moving to the cloud, while maintaining control of critical data.
What is great about this offering is that no agent is required on end user’s devices, ensuring that the discovery process of cloud app does not block end users from being productive.
The Key Components:
The key components of Microsoft cloud app security are the following:
- Cloud Discovery & Shadow IT
Shadow IT names all these cloud apps and services that users use without control from our IT area, and can use to steal information or open doors to external attacks. Services like google drive or dropbox can be used to store corporative information without control.
To get full visibility of the cloud applications used by the organization is the first step. Understand which risky applications, untrusted applications and even trusted applications, provide insight to shadow IT and shadow data loss. Use Shadow IT discovery to initially to get a clear picture of risk and exposure and continuously monitor your network for maintaining policy and visibility .
- Sanctioned and unsanctioned apps & the Cloud App Catalog
After we have reviewed the list of discovers apps in your environment, you can protect your environment by approving safe apps (Sanctioned) that any employee can use/download on-premises using company’s network connections. These apps are in the knowledge of the IT staff.
It also exits prohibited or unwanted apps (Unsanctioned). Employee work flexibility allow them to work from home with their own networks. This results in the use of some unsanctioned apps, which are used without the IT staff knowing.
- Conditional Access Session Control
Conditional Access control allows you to enforce access controls on your organization’s apps based on certain conditions. Conditions define who, what and Where. Who ( user or groups),What ( which apps) and Where (locations or networks). After determining the conditions, a conditional access policy is applied.
- Policy Controls
Microsoft cloud app security can enforce policies based on user’s behavior. For example, IT admins can quickly identify suspicious behavior inside Office 365 if a user is doing mass download or connecting for unsecure networks. There are a many policy templates that are classified according to a risk category.
To learn more about these key components, visit this blog post here. Otherwise, stay tuned for the upcoming two blog from these series, were you will get a deeper understanding about Cloud App Security features, architecture and more.
If you want to connect with us, reach out to our specialists at https://vnextiq.com/contact/
