2020 will be the year that SaaS breaks enterprise security

There’s no doubt that the web is now the most important business tool for users. Critical systems such as ERP, CRM, collaboration and communication platforms, customer-facing apps, and other business tools that were once on-prem are moving to the cloud. Users can log on from anywhere and access all the information they need to conduct business on a daily basis.

Office 365, for example, is now used by 1 in 5 corporate employees worldwide, making it the most widely used cloud service by user count. Leading the way is the financial services industry, followed by manufacturing, healthcare, and legal services. In total, there are 155 million Office 365 business users, making up more than half of the 81 percent of total organizations that have made the shift to cloud services.

Clearly, businesses are moving to the cloud—specifically to Microsoft’s productivity suite in the cloud.

The disruption: Existing security infrastructure cannot handle SaaS adoption

Unfortunately, traditional cybersecurity solutions were not designed for cloud adoption. They were designed for on-prem infrastructures that saw traffic flow into and out of the enterprise through a central gateway, where it could be monitored and blocked if necessary.

This traditional security architecture is impossible to sustain when applied to today’s SaaS platforms. Today’s cloud applications are built for ubiquitous connectivity—ensuring that updates and edits are made in real time across shared files and applications. For example, Office 365 requires 20 persistent connections per user.

This puts an enormous stress on traditional security infrastructures made up of traditional firewalls and proxies (like secure web gateways). The increased traffic requires enterprises to scale through more or bigger boxes—otherwise, performance for users greatly suffers. Even if appliance-based cybersecurity is possible architecturally, the cost is often prohibitive.

The result, of course, is a degradation in cybersecurity posture. As users access mission-critical systems and data from anywhere with an Internet connection, it has become increasingly unlikely that the enterprise security team is able to block malicious attempts to gain access to those systems and user devices.

The solution: The Menlo Security Secure Internet with an Isolation Core™

The only way to protect increasingly mobile users who are increasingly relying on web-based apps, websites, and SaaS platforms is by delivering security services through the cloud. Attaching cybersecurity policies to each individual workload rather than across broad, unmanageable categories ensures that all users are protected while opening up more of the Internet. In addition, an isolate-or-block approach ensures that all web content is considered risky and is prevented from accessing users’ devices, where malicious actors can eventually make their way to business systems.

The result is a flexible, efficient, and scalable yet robust cybersecurity posture that stops today’s modern threats in their tracks. Contact Menlo Security today to learn more about the Menlo Security Secure Internet with an Isolation Core™