Cloud Access Security Brokers

The Market Compass analyzes the Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) market, focusing on how organizations can secure and govern cloud service usage in hybrid IT environments spanning SaaS, on-premises, and hosted services. As cloud adoption expands, key risks emerge from poor integration of cloud usage into existing security and access governance processes, uncontrolled “shadow IT” driven by employees and business units, regulatory pressures (notably GDPR), and increased cyber threats such as data theft, corruption, and malware propagation through cloud services.

CASBs address these issues by providing discovery of cloud usage, access control, cloud data protection, and compliance enforcement/reporting—capabilities that have increasingly expanded into Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). Architecturally, CASBs evolved from log-based discovery to control points using proxies (inline enforcement with potential performance and compatibility downsides) and API-based approaches (granular controls but with detection-to-enforcement delays). Most mature products now use hybrid architectures combining proxy and API methods, and they integrate with adjacent controls such as rights management, DLP, secure web gateways, access governance, malware protection, and posture management.

The report argues that standalone CASBs are declining as buyers prefer broader cloud security solutions that unify CASB, CSPM, data and user protection, and Zero Trust Network Access, with future expansion toward edge computing and 5G-driven challenges. It defines essential and recommended capabilities across discovery, access control, data security, compliance, posture management, auditability, deployability, scalability, and integration with identity sources (e.g., AD, Azure AD, LDAP, IDaaS).

Vendors are compared via ratings and highlighted strengths. Featured differentiators include Bitglass’ agentless AJAX-VM reverse proxy and on-device secure web gateway, Forcepoint’s human-centric approach with access/security governance elements, Censornet’s context-sharing Autonomous Security Engine, CipherCloud’s integrated data-centric protection and AnyApp, and McAfee’s extension of CASB controls to custom applications on IaaS/PaaS.

• Gartner coined the term Cloud Access Security Brokers in 2011.
• Early CASB products relied on analyzing enterprise network gateway logs and mapping cloud service IP addresses to identify cloud usage.
• Microsoft warns that third-party inline network devices may affect Office 365 availability, performance, interoperability, and supportability.
• Between 2015 and 2019, major vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, McAfee, Oracle, and Symantec acquired CASB technology.
• CASB fundamental functions include discovery, access control, data protection, and compliance support.
• Forcepoint acquired the Skyfence CASB product and business from Imperva in 2017.
• McAfee acquired Skyhigh Networks in 2018, and the product is sold as McAfee MVISION Cloud.
• Microsoft Cloud App Security is based on Adallom, acquired in 2015.
• Cisco Cloudlock is an API-based CASB delivered as a cloud service hosted in AWS.
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure announced plans to replace CASB with a more integrated Cloud Guard service, which was not GA at the time of writing and was expected to be available in August.

• “CASBs provide security controls that are not available through other security devices to provide a point of control over access to cloud services by any user and from any device.”
• “In our opinion, the market for a standalone CASB is shrinking and organizations are now looking for CASB as part of a complete cloud security solution.”
• “The major functionality missing from CASB is hybrid access governance enabling the access rights and entitlements of users to be governed consistently across services and applications however they are delivered.”
• “Typically, reverse proxies are hardcoded to specific versions of applications.”
• “Forcepoint takes a human centric approach to security.”
• “ASE enables previously siloed services to share security context, state data and events whilst leveraging threat intelligence.”
• “AnyApp allows custom applications to benefit from encryption, tokenization, dynamic access control, DRM, UEBA, as well as threat prevention.”
• “It provides a self-service model that uses machine learning to automatically understand activity in the custom applications.”
• “Netskope Cloud XD uses big data analytics to identify this usage in ‘extreme definition’ (XD).”
• “These spider graphs provide comparative information by showing the areas where the products are stronger or weaker.”