What is the difference between CASB and SWG? What is the best tool to choose between the two? Do you even need to choose?
What Is the Difference Between CASB and SWG?
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
A CASB refers to a product that sits between a cloud service provider (CSP) and an enterprise, enabling the enterprise to identify, monitor, and control access to cloud systems. A CASB is a tool that enables an IT security team to monitor and manage the security of data in the cloud.
CASBs are built with two specific use cases in mind:
- Audit data access by employees accessing cloud services (i.e. Gmail, Dropbox, Salesforce.com)
- Detect data exfiltration attempts of sensitive enterprise data
Moreover, CASB has four main components:
- Cloud Access Gateway (CAG). An agent that runs on every employee endpoint that browses the Internet. The CAG intercepts traffic from applications that connect to cloud services, inspects it for threats, and then allows or blocks traffic accordingly.
- Cloud Policy Management System (CPMS). As rules are developed for accessing the cloud services, they are stored in a centralized CPMS database. The CPMS is accessible by agents on enterprise endpoints and by the CASB management console
- Cloud Service Provider Interface (CSPI). The CSPI resides on the network or VPN appliance that protects enterprise endpoints from unauthorized access to the cloud
- Service Control API. This API provides a means for the CPMS to control access to the cloud services consumed by employees.
Secure Web Gateway (SWG)
An SWG is a web application firewall (WAF) that is placed in front of an organization’s web applications. An SWG inspects all traffic to and from the web server and makes decisions on how to handle each request based on a set of rules.
SWGs are used to detect, block, and throttle requests that contain malicious content or come from attackers. They can also be used to monitor traffic for policy compliance and alert on suspicious activity.
Moreover, SWGs have four main components:
- Filter Engine. The filter engine is the heart of an SWG. It acts as the traffic cop, examining each message and deciding what to do with it. The filter engine can be configured to block, throttle, or pass messages based on a set of rules.
- A Policy Manager is used to create and manage policies that define how the filter engine should handle requests.
- A Reporting Tool is used to generate reports on how the filter engine is performing from a performance and security perspective
- An Administration Console is used by administrators to configure policies. And also, to create user accounts for managing the product and view reports about traffic through the filter engine
What Is the Best Tool for You?
CASBs are built for enterprises with large teams of employees using cloud services for everyday business tasks. But CASBs don’t provide defense-in-depth protection against insider threats or external attacks. They complement existing security solutions by filling a gap where they are needed most.
For this reason, CASBs tend to integrate with SWG. This means the CASB provides visibility into cloud services. So, the SWG protects the web application perimeter while the CASB monitors and controls traffic to cloud services.