The global pandemic has forever changed the workplace and has reshaped the priorities around cybersecurity. Recent months have shown that cloud apps have helped people around the globe stay productive and connected, however, did you know that they also pose an increased cybersecurity risk to businesses large and small, especially when you don’t know which cloud apps your users may be using. With many businesses now adopting a hybrid workforce, security needs to be at the forefront of every cloud app deployment.
Even before the pandemic began, businesses were finding limited success with low visibility into data, user behaviour and the movement of sensitive data to the cloud.
A Total Economic Impact Study in May 2020 by Forrester confirmed that these limitations experienced by many businesses have led to the rise of shadow IT, difficulties with recognising and remediating security threats and the ability to adapt to evolving compliance requirements for cloud services.
Addressing these limitations with Zero Trust in mind should include the deployment of Defender for Cloud Apps and the Forrester study confirmed that the deployment of Defender for Cloud Apps:
- Led to an 80% reduction in time to monitor, assess and govern cloud application portfolio risks, totalling a saving of more than $571,000
- Lowered the time and effort to remediate incidents by up to 80%
- Automatically eliminated 75% of threats due to the increased visibility and automation capabilities
- Reduced the likelihood of a data breach by 40%
- Kept compliance costs down by reducing time spent on audit reporting by 90%
To ensure you’re able to protect sensitive information and get ahead of any shadow IT concerns, watch my latest FastTrack Update, where I explain the recommended settings that you should consider deploying using Defender for Cloud Apps. Following these recommendations will help meet your Applications Zero Trust objectives and ensure users are not only accessing sanctioned applications across your network but are doing so in a secure manner to prevent any form of lateral movement by malicious actors.
If you missed it, check out my previous FastTrack Updates, where I explored the capabilities available across the first two foundation pillars of Zero Trust – Identity and Endpoints.
The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of cloud security and adopting a Zero Trust approach to protect sensitive information. Insentra’s Zero Trust Assessment provides a comprehensive evaluation of your organisation’s network security, identifying vulnerabilities and providing actionable recommendations for a Zero Trust framework. Schedule yours today and take control of your cloud security and prevent any form of lateral movement by malicious actors.
