Cybersecurity is a constant battle between those who want to protect information and those who try to steal it. This cat-and-mouse game will continue to evolve, with both sides investing in new technology to outperform the other. A secure web gateway (SWG) helps organizations protect against cyberattacks and data breaches. This is particularly important for remote workforces, which often access sensitive data through unsecured devices and public networks.
Privacy & Data Retention
In the world of cybersecurity, incredible volumes of data are stored indefinitely – resulting in massive expenses for storage and management. This also exacerbates threats as it increases the information adversaries can capture. As users work from anywhere and access data and applications through internet-connected devices unmanaged by IT, protecting against cyberattacks is becoming increasingly difficult. A security web gateway is an essential tool rescues data and applications from malicious content. It also enforces corporate and regulatory policy compliance. SWGs have evolved to include other critical capabilities like cloud access security brokers (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), and firewalls as a service to become secure access service edge solutions.
Sophisticated Threat Detection
Cybersecurity is more critical than ever in a world where everything depends on computers and the Internet. But it can be acceptable for consumers, regulators, or organizations.
Threat detection is essential to any cybersecurity strategy, but it is no longer enough to monitor for known attacks. New cyber threats, such as ransomware, can cause significant damage in minutes – and the attack cycle is growing shorter.
To protect against these attacks, secure web gateways are evolving into comprehensive security services combining threat detection with cloud access security brokers (CASB) and firewall capabilities. Providers should focus on offering bundled offerings that address hot-button use cases to maximize these emerging opportunities.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
The technologies used in secure web gateways (SWG) and Next Generation Firewalls identify and protect against advanced threats from the Internet by examining network traffic.
By requiring users to authenticate their identity with a means other than a standard account username and password, MFA adds an extra layer of security to the authentication process.
This additional factor may be a physical token that generates a temporary code or one-time password, an authenticator app on a smartphone, or a biometric scan. This approach makes it much more difficult for cybercriminals to acquire credentials or access data. Some MFA solutions are adaptive, determining the factors required depending on risk. This is also known as risk-based authentication.
Adaptive Authentication
Adaptive authentication uses dynamic rules to reinforce MFA, making it more difficult for cybercriminals to bypass security tools. For example, it might increase security requirements for a user if they are logging in with their recognized device on a corporate VPN but lower those requirements when using unknown devices on public networks.
It also considers device factors, such as user role, the identity of managed and unmanaged devices, and the security posture. This allows for granular policies that turn off features of end-user devices, such as USB drive mapping or screenshot functionality, to prevent threats from being introduced to the network. It also identifies anomalous digital behavior, such as an unusual change in location or remote worker activities, and flags it for further verification.
Real-Time Monitoring
Real-time monitoring collects infrastructure data as it happens and delivers it to decision-makers in a low-latency stream. This allows IT teams to quickly detect and respond to issues, such as a memory leak affecting an application or a system crash.
SWGs analyze data packets between users and the Internet to identify and stop web-borne threats and malware infections from entering an organization’s network. As a result, they offer more granular security than firewalls.
SWGs also help to enforce security policies for distributed workforces. For example, an SWG can detect data movement from company instances of SaaS apps and cloud services to employees’ accounts.
Enhanced Data Security
Cybercriminals are constantly developing new ways to get our private data in a world where the Internet has given us access to online banking and smart home automation. As a result, threat actors and security experts are engaged in a never-ending game of cat and mouse in which the latter is investing in technology to outwit the former.
Shortly, cybersecurity will be a top priority for all industries. Whether protecting private text messages on smartphones or bolstering the encryption and authentication features of 5G networks, keeping up with ever-changing threats and regulations will be critical. This is especially important for companies whose employees may work remotely. This can increase the risk of ransomware attacks and other threats that target individual devices or shared systems.
Enhanced Interoperability
With workforces becoming more distributed and networks increasingly hybrid, organizations need security solutions that protect any device, anywhere. For this reason, the modern cybersecurity stack cannot function without a secure web gateway (SWG).
SWGs enforce adherence to corporate and regulatory policies by filtering malicious software and unwanted software from the user-initiated web and Internet traffic. According to Gartner, a SWG is a solution that, at the very least, has application controls for widely used web-based programs like Skype and Instant Messenger, malware detection and filtering, and URL filtering. Data leak prevention that is native or integrated is frequently included as well. That’s why SWGs use sandboxing today to test potential malware behavior by executing code in a controlled environment. This helps to protect against threats that camouflage themselves in encrypted web traffic.
Personalized Security
With the workforce becoming increasingly distributed, it is imperative that organizations can secure employees while working from anywhere. A security web gateway (SWG) can enforce cybersecurity policies to ensure workers can authenticate and use the Internet safely.
An SWG solution enforces corporate and regulatory policy compliance by filtering malicious and unwanted software from the user-initiated web and Internet traffic.
SWG solutions incorporate CASB, DLP, and firewall as a service along with DNS layer security to offer a unified security control point for all internet threats.
Another crucial feature is data loss prevention, which scans encrypted internet traffic to prevent confidential data from leaving a network. This protects the company from costly breaches caused by ransomware, phishing, and other cyber attacks.
