The cloud access security broker (CASB), also known as the cloud security gateway (CSG), was introduced to address the challenges of adopting cloud services. CASBs aim to satisfy a number of enterprise requirements related to providing governance for disparate and dynamic cloud computing environments.

As enterprise consumption of cloud-based applications and services continues, the CASB is becoming a “must-have” rather than a “nice-to-have.” In a recent NSS survey, 87.9% of participants indicated that their organizations utilize a technology they consider a CASB; this is a 27.2% increase over the results of a similar NSS survey in 2017. However, evaluating and deploying a CASB is no small task. In fact, many of the cybersecurity veterans we spoke with consider their CASB purchasing decision to be the most challenging their organization has made.

This product selection series, supported by the 2018 NSS Labs Cloud Access Security Broker Study, demonstrates CASB utilization across US enterprises and provides enterprises with information they can use to make defendable CASB purchases.