A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a security policy enforcement point that is placed between cloud service consumers and cloud service providers to combine and interject enterprise security policies as cloud-based resources are accessed. CASBs can enforce zero-trust access control and policy enforcement for cloud environments, and they can implement access control, visibility, threat prevention, and data protection for SaaS services used by an organization. By sitting at the edge of the cloud and inspecting all traffic entering and leaving it, CASBs can block traffic that violates corporate policy or is determined to pose a potential risk to an organization and its cloud infrastructure. CASBs can be deployed either as a physical security appliance or a SaaS solution, and they can filter traffic based on internal rules, such as zero-trust access controls, corporate security policies, and limited threat prevention and filtering.

Some key benefits of CASBs include:

• Flexible enterprise solutions: CASBs can combine multiple different security policies, from authentication and credential mapping to encryption, malware detection, and more, offering flexible enterprise solutions that help ensure cloud app security across authorized and unauthorized applications, and managed and unmanaged devices.

• Adaptive access control: By aggregating and understanding typical usage patterns, CASBs can identify anomalous behavior and recognize malicious activities. Adaptive access control, malware mitigation, and other capabilities help protect the enterprise from third party or internal threats.

• Compliance: CASBs can help organizations comply with regulations, even when cloud services are beyond their perimeter and out of their direct control.

CASBs are an important component of an organizations cloud security infrastructure, and they are commonly integrated into Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions.