It’s time to move beyond the CASB

The CISO dream looms large: dashboards lit up with green, daily reports on rapidly progressing initiatives, threats easily detected and quickly remediated. In the dream, life is good.

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The reality is quite different. Navigating the maze of threats and the corresponding niche security controls built to address them is a challenge fit for an overfull workday. And this effort is independent of the real challenge of reducing risk without introducing so much friction to the business it grinds to a halt. And then, of course, there’s the need to confront the reality of security controls that are losing their effectiveness as business technologies and operations evolve. One of those controls is the CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) and its related network-centric security solutions.

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Indeed, as more work migrates off the network, and as employees are increasingly adopting SaaS to improve productivity, security leaders are chasing good money after bad—further investing in an attempt to control SaaS use and behaviors at the network edge, despite the reality that solutions like CASB were designed for a bygone era where all employees connected to the corporate network on managed devices and waited 5-7 business days to get permission to use any new software. These network-based security solutions were designed as a dam to control a river, but IT and security leaders now find themselves in a vast ocean of SaaS and AI tools. They need new approaches.

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How do CASBs work?

CASBs act as intermediaries between users and cloud services, enforcing security policies to control access and protect data. They are integral components of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) or Secure Service Edge (SSE) platforms, focusing on securing access to enterprise cloud services and SaaS applications, often through zero trust principles.

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Limitations of CASBs: Yesterday’s solution for today’s challenges

Over the past decade, cloud transformation has shifted the network perimeter from the data center to the cloud. Today, the network edge extends even further, to the tens of thousands of cloud environments operated by SaaS providers—and to every remote employee and contractor who accesses those environments over the internet. New solutions are oriented towards the “identity edge” or what could be considered the “workforce edge”—the dynamic mesh of SaaS accounts and integrations where work gets done in modern organizations.

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Cloud access service brokers (CASBs), cloud security gateways (CSGs), and secure web gateways (SWGs) emerged to manage and secure traffic and data between end users on a corporate network and the internet, cloud services, and SaaS applications. But, maintaining this network perimeter becomes increasingly untenable as SaaS use sprawls beyond a handful of key enterprise SaaS applications and as remote and hybrid workers connect directly to new and unknown SaaS applications off network and on personal devices. It’s no longer feasible to force all of your workforce’s internet traffic through this sieve.

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Additionally, as new SaaS and AI tools emerge in the market, organizations are forced into an endless game of whack-a-mole as they update “allow” and “block” lists. And in the face of the rapid rate of AI adoption we’ve seen in customer environments, it would be nearly impossible for SASE vendors and customers to continually update policy rules. Meanwhile, more blunt policies such as "disallow all AI,” disrupt and slow down the business—which wedges IT and security teams solidly between a rock and a hard place.

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Beyond those core challenges, CASBs have some other critical limitations:

• Deployment time: CASB deployment can be complex and require months to complete, and then even more time to gather enough network traffic data to analyze user behaviors. Expect delays in critical decision making and overall time to value.
• Incomplete visibility: Once deployed, CASBs may struggle to detect off-network or unmanaged SaaS usage, leaving gaps in security coverage.
• Employee resistance: CASBs often enforce policies in a way that can disrupt workflows, leading to employee dissatisfaction and potential circumvention of security measures.
• Lack of context: CASBs enforce policy on a binary basis of “good” or “bad,” which doesn’t allow for the consideration of business context in deciding what is allowed and what is denied. 

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Nudge Security: A flexible, intelligent CASB alternative

What if you could instead implement and enforce policies for SaaS and GenAI apps in a way that considers business context, cost, utilization, and risk, and does so in a way that engages employees rather than blocking their work?

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That’s the approach we’ve taken in building Nudge Security. Here’s a quick summary of how our approach is different (and we would argue better) than CASBs:

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• Gain full SaaS visibility on Day One, including apps you’ve never heard of, and accounts created before deploying Nudge Security. No waiting weeks or months to gather enough data to do anything useful. 
• Align to business-led IT adoption trends by distributing SaaS admin tasks to business owners who have context on how the app is used, while maintaining centralized IT oversight and governance.
• Enable productivity, don’t block it by nudging employees in real-time to request information or guide them toward positive security behaviors. 
• Avoid complexity with self-service setup that takes minutes—no network configuration, agents, or browser plugins required. And, no tuning of complicated rulesets.
• Assess cost, usage, and risk all in one place with automated spend discovery, security profiles for every app, and identification of inactive accounts, so you can consider the full picture when making decisions about your tech stack.

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For more information on how Nudge Security provides a modern alternative to CASB, visit our detailed comparison page.

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Moving beyond CASB to modern, scalable SaaS security

As organizations and employees continue to embrace SaaS tools, the need for effective SaaS security and governance is urgent. And while CASBs have served this purpose in the past, their limitations necessitate a more modern approach. Organizations need solutions built for today’s challenges—they need comprehensive visibility and control over SaaS environments. 

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