The shift to the cloud has been tectonic; however, the IT infrastructures of the last 20 years have not kept pace to adequately protect enterprise networks, data and transactions. Applications are moving to the cloud, so must the corporate security gateway. Enterprises need a cloud application security gateway.

FireLayers™ has announced its flagship solution, the FireLayers Cloud Application Security Gateway, the first of a series for enabling the secure and responsible adoption of cloud applications. This new cloud application security gateway sits between cloud apps and users, enabling enterprises to responsibly and securely leverage cloud applications like ADP, Google Apps, NetSuite, Office365, Salesforce, TribeHR, Workday and others, as well as customized and homegrown apps.

“Until now, CIOs and CISOs were forced into making the inadequate choice between blocking or allowing cloud apps,” said FireLayers co-founder and CEO, Yair Grindlinger. “IT teams and business leaders are becoming increasingly aware that cloud app security is a corporate problem, and that they need to be responsible for the security of how the application is used, the data and the users themselves. With FireLayers, they have the tools they need to enforce corporate policies that support their risk tolerance and compliance needs.”

FireLayers’ policy-based cloud application controls – an industry first – allow IT teams to define, deploy and enforce corporate security, compliance and governance policies across any device or application (popular, customized or homegrown) with near-zero performance impact. Furthermore, the FireLayers open architecture integrates with a host of tools for security (anti-x, malware, DLP, encryption and others) and monitoring (SIEM). The FireLayers gateway is the first solution to support the standards-based XACML protocol for interoperable access control, making it a solid foundation for a strategic cloud security program.

With cloud security now impacting corporate operation decisions at every level, it is mission critical for organizations to have centralized cloud control. In addition to providing deep visibility into cloud application usage, FireLayers protects against external attackers, account hijacking, malicious insiders, unauthorized access from BYOD, unintentional risky behavior and thousands of other risks inherent in using cloud apps.

“Cloud app providers like Salesforce, Google, Box, SuccessFactors and others provide excellent user experiences, meet demanding performance SLAs and secure data in their cloud. But their responsibility ends there. FireLayers closes that gap by giving IT teams a cloud application security gateway to control and secure all cloud application usage at a granular level,” said Doron Elgressy, FireLayers co-founder and president.

Available immediately, the FireLayers Cloud Application Security Gateway achieves a number of industry firsts:

  • Delivers granular policy-based rule enforcement and auditing down to the single command level
  • Uses the XAML standard to create and enforce policies so that user interactions can be identified in real time
  • Allows or denies individual sessions
  • Controls any command in any cloud app (popular, customized or homegrown) without depending on native APIs, extending security, compliance and IT governance capabilities
  • Provides pre-defined controls, rule sets and policies for a growing catalog of popular cloud applications; i.e., Box, Google Apps, Office365, NetSuite, Workday, Yammer and others
  • Integrates with best-of-breed cloud security (authentication, anti-malware, anti-x, DLP, encryption and others) and monitoring (SIEM) tools
  • Delivers near-zero latency and transparent operation for sustainable user productivity
  • Features device and session-based controls including: SSL/OS/browser versions, IP address control and session ID protection

“FireLayers has chosen to focus on application control and how it impacts security, compliance and governance. The company feels that this is the core of what the market is all about, and we agree,” wrote 451 Research Analyst Adrian Sanabria in a recent Market Impact Report. In a later Tweet, he added, “Their example to me: SaaS app you want doesn’t support two-factor authentication, a corporate requirement? Just add it! Blew my mind.”

 

This article was originally posted “FireLayers Enables Secure Cloud Application Usage” from Cloud Strategy Magazine.