How the cloud is changing the security game

Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Brandon Butler.

Cloud computing offers many advantages, but with those benefits come a new range of security concerns.  “From a security perspective, the cloud has introduced new risks,” says David Levin, director of information security at Western Union, who oversees the security of applications being used at the money transfer company.

Levin says the first step toward addressing risk is figuring out how much there is … and that first means knowing which cloud services are being used.  Levin turned to the services of Skyhigh Networks, a vendor in what Gartner calls the emerging market of Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Products in this market basically sit between end users and cloud services, injecting security protocols between the two. Gartner estimates that CASB will be a $3.1 billion market by 2015…

By using Skyhigh, Levin got greater visibility into what apps his employees were using and which ones have appropriate security practices in place.  “Companies know there is stuff going into the cloud they’re not aware of,” says Adrian Sanabria, senior security analyst at 451 Research Group, which calls this market Cloud Access Control. “CACs can provide that visibility.”…

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