Benefits
Security as a service offers similar advantages and even more:
Policies That Follow Users
Whether your users are working on the network in your headquarters, connecting in a coffee shop, or using airport Wi-Fi, they should have identical security and data protection. With a cloud service, your business policies follow users no matter where they connect. All connections are inspected and secured, no matter which user they’re coming from, the app being accessed, or any encryption protocols in use.
Improved Visibility
With cloud security, your organization gets real-time visibility into all of its traffic, applications in use, any compromised IoT devices, threats and policy violations blocked, and much more. Like a security information and event management (SIEM) solution, an integrated cloud solution gives you a centralized view of all activities across services—firewall, sandbox, secure web gateway, advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, bandwidth control, and more.
Fewer Vulnerabilities
Today’s bad actors understand that legacy security in the data center can’t protect these users, and attackers are increasingly targeting mobile users, and using mobile devices as a beachhead to attack enterprise environments. If you can’t secure every connection, you leave your entire network vulnerable to attack. Security as a service closes gaps in enterprise security created by off-net users and those connecting directly to cloud apps and the open internet.
Increased Scalability
Legacy network security models can’t scale, and they certainly aren’t agile. Changes are onerous and take much too long in the digital world. Cloud security, on the other hand, is near-infinitely scalable. It easily handles traffic spikes and inspects all traffic, even encrypted traffic, without impacting performance. You can add users, add services, and even add offices almost instantly. You never run out of capacity, as you do with appliances.
Challenges
The legacy “data center as the center of the universe” network and network security architecture has become obsolete, an inhibitor to the needs of digital business. In this way, SECaaS provides a clear advantage, but there are still some challenges that come with it.
- Migrating away from legacy hardware: The benefits of cloud security cannot be overstated, but in the migratory period between moving off of legacy security and implementing the cloud, your organization could be left vulnerable.
- Accountability (or a lack thereof): Per a shared responsibility model, part of the fault with a cloud service issue lies with the provider and the other part with the customer. Regardless of who’s to blame, the consequence is no different if security issues arise during a SECaaS deployment.
- Misconfiguration risk: This ties into accountability, but it’s worth mentioning since misconfigurations are the number one cause of cloud data breaches. If your team or a cloud provider makes a mistake while provisioning, problems may rise as a result.