Window on a Cloudy Sky

There’s no question that cloud services are now a regular component of IT operations. And while this is great news for business users and developers who appreciate the agility and increased productivity offered by cloud services, security professionals are getting nervous.

Just about everyone in this line of work knows that all the excitement over adoption of cloud applications has spawned Shadow IT (the use of unsanctioned cloud services). However, most security teams lack the ability to discover what cloud services employees are using, what corporate data is being stored in the cloud, and who has access to the data. That’s a problem.

Intel Security has begun to roll out our response to this issue: McAfee Cloud Visibility – Community Edition (CVCE). It is our first of two entries into the cloud access security broker (CASB) market. McAfee Cloud Visibility is a free service for existing customers with McAfee DLP, encryption or web protection technologies.

This solution comes at an important time. Cloud services are now utilized by more than 90% of organizations around the world. In fact, many are working under a “Cloud First” philosophy, only choosing to deploy an internal service if there is no suitable cloud variant available. As a result, IT architectures are rapidly shifting to a hybrid private/public cloud model, with those surveyed expecting 80% of their IT budget to be cloud-based within an average of 15 months.

We think McAfee Cloud Visibility is the answer to these issues — it enables security professionals to:

• Discover authorized and unauthorized cloud applications used by employees.
• Identify risk associated with cloud applications based on risk indicators.
• Monitor sensitive data flowing between users and cloud applications.
• Track endpoint health around threats, data leakage, and theft.

An added advantage is single-pane-of-glass manageability via McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Cloud, which provides centralized monitoring of cloud applications and on-premises Intel Security solutions, allowing for the synchronization of data protection events into one easy-to-use interface. That’s something no other CASB vendor can offer currently.

So, rather than fret about lack of cloud visibility or concern yourself with justifying the expense of a CASB solution, check out the McAfee Cloud Visibility—Community Edition solution at www.mcafee.com/cloudvisibility.

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