Total Cloud Security Blog

SaaS has many advantages over on-premises software deployments, including lower upfront costs, quick setup and deployment, and accessibility from any device with a browser and internet connectivity. Because of this, organizations rely on SaaS to run their operations. Yet a single misconfiguration of your SaaS could lead to data theft or malicious data corruption. For example, not configuring the requirement for complex passwords can make a brute force attack on a SaaS account login more likely to succeed. Or improper file restrictions may make data available for users who should not have access to it. That is why organizations need a SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solution.

Today we released our 2021 Remote Workforce Security Report. We surveyed 287 IT and security professionals to understand how remote work has transformed the state of security operations over the last year. 

I'm frequently asked whether Secure Web Gateways (SWGs) and Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) compete. After all, they're both proxies, they both offer data & threat protection, they're both cloud-based (some SWGs), and both are gradually replacing firewalls in a lot of enterprise environments. Sounds similar, so they must be competitive, right? Actually, they serve as complements for two very different use cases. 

As cloud-based SWG vendors add more capabilities, they are starting to look more and more promising as a direct replacement for a firewall. By that, I mean that for the same use case (network/perimeter protection), you can use either a firewall or cloud-SWG - they are simply delivering network security services via the cloud (in Bitglass’ case, our SmartEdge SWG is a bit different and deploys locally on each user’s device - but you can read more about that approach and its benefits here). 

2020 was a challenging year for cybersecurity teams. They had to secure an unexpected shift to remote work in a matter of days, respond to a surge in BYOD usage, and maintain secure operations without physical access to the resources that they typically use--all without compromising productivity or performance.