Why CASB might not be the right fit for securing your Salesforce?

It’s estimated that nearly half of all breaches today involve attackers exploiting cloud infrastructures.  The last few years have seen major incidents of this nature, such as breaches at Facebook and Kaseya.

In a hybrid, multi-cloud world, it is critical to maintain visibility across key points of your infrastructure, as well as receiving prompt threat alerts and being prepared to act on them quickly. 

However, finding the right solution can be challenging. The cloud security market is crowded, and specific platforms, like Salesforce, are best protected by specialist solutions designed for the job.  

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a common choice for most cloud security needs. A traditional CASB is an intermediary between users and cloud service providers, helping with compliance and data protection. 

While useful tools, CASBs can present issues. They are often complex, draining time and resources to manage. In addition, their positioning, between the user and the cloud, can lead to security and performance problems. 

First, here’s an overview of the key differences:

Now let’s go a bit deeper:

CASBs provide useful features that are particularly valuable for: cloud environment assessment, user behavioural control, and policy regulation. However, they are not built primarily for active threat protection, so enterprises relying on CASBs for cloud security will lack the real-time protection which is  critical against more advanced threats.

Many CASB solutions rely on periodic scans or batch processing and, often, only scan a file or link once. This leads to dangerous delays in identifying threats, and leaving the system vulnerable to multi-stage attacks or links, that are changed, after initial delivery, to become malicious. CASBs also lack sandboxing capabilities, so they can’t perform in-depth heuristic analysis for files. 

Further, you will typically need to set use and device policies, configuring the solution to match, which means there is no protection for external or BYOD users – a big issue if you collaborate with partners through Salesforce.  

In comparison, ‘WithSecure™️ Cloud Protection for Salesforce’ provides, by conducting real-time scans of all files upon both upload and download, comprehensive protection against malware threats. It  also offers click-time URL protection, with links being scanned both when they are uploaded and when a user clicks them to detect any changes.

You can initiate on-demand and automated scans for your entire environment and cover all users regardless of their devices. 

Visibility

Alongside their features, CASBs are designed to provide comprehensive visibility into cloud services and secure multiple cloud applications. But they likely don’t have the same level of granularity as a natively integrated solution. Tracking interactions, with the specific file, is impossible if you encounter an incident.

WithSecure™️ Cloud Protection for Salesforce provides comprehensive, real-time visibility into data on your platform, including the ability to track interactions with content. This gives you the “who, what, when, and where”, allowing you to understand exactly what has happened, and what you should do next. It also offers comprehensive Salesforce-native analytics capabilities, as well as full audit trails for efficient threat hunting and forensic investigations – ideal for meeting regulatory compliance demands.

Operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness

Complexity is another common issue with traditional CASB solutions. They are often complex to deploy, requiring time, expertise, and significant cost to become fully operational. Managing the solution and its integrations can be resource-intensive and requires specialist skills and knowledge, driving up costs and hitting your ROI.

Further, the way these solutions are positioned, between the user and the cloud environment, can cause detection latency and performance overhead issues. 

Integration with existing systems can also be an issue, especially if you hope to use one CASB across your Salesforce and other cloud environments. You’ll often need to use a separate portal for management that is not connected to your other tools . Further, one CASB may not cover all your platforms in any case, necessitating multiple CASBs from different vendors.

In contrast, WithSecure™️ Cloud Protection for Salesforce was designed to function as a native application that blends seamlessly into your Salesforce environment. A user-friendly interface and familiar controls require minimal training for administrators. Maintaining it is a breeze, with high automation and no extra portals, leading to a low cost of ownership. 

Integrating workflows, alerts, and metadata with Security information and event management (SIEM) and other third-party systems is simple and easy, scanning rapidly without sacrificing performance. Licensing is also based on usage, with no additional Salesforce licensing fees or API consumption.

With a click-and-go approach to deployment, you can be up and running in mere minutes. A user-friendly interface means  with familiar and straightforward Salesforce controls means you don’t need specialist skills or training. 

Data confidentiality and integrity

As well as issues with advanced threat detection, CASBs can inadvertently expose businesses to other security problems. These solutions typically sit between the user and cloud service, leading to potential security risks, such as compromised file encryption during transit.

WithSecure™️ Cloud Protection for Salesforce avoids this issue by running within the Salesforce platform, ensuring that your data remains securely stored within the environment.

Find out what WithSecure™ Cloud Protection for Salesforce can do for you

CASBs are valuable tools that will go a long way in keeping your cloud environments secure and compliant. But when it comes to taking strong preventive measures and gaining more granular visibility,   WithSecure™ Cloud Protection for Salesforce offers a fast, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution, that natively integrates into your Salesforce environment. 

You get real-time protection against advanced cyber threats such as sophisticated malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks providing comprehensive granular visibility into your content security status. 

There is no tedious implementation period; you can achieve instant value with our click-and-go deployment. Why not head over to AppExchange for a test drive now?