The coronavirus epidemic has forced governments and organisations to enact social distancing measures to control the spread of the virus. These measures affected how people work, with the majority of employees in most companies working remotely, and directly accessing the internet and cloud apps and services without the protection of their corporate network. This rapid change of working conditions has resulted in companies facing a considerable challenge; they are unable to provide the security needed for their remote workers. Legacy security solutions cannot protect someone outside of the company's premises. At the same time, remote access VPNs which are used to provide access to applications in the corporate data centre cannot adequately provide access to applications hosted in public cloud environments.

Netskope's Strengths

Netskope for Remote workers

Netskope provides a globally available, cloud-based security platform for securing remote worker's access to the web, cloud and private applications in the corporate data centre and the private cloud.

Data Protection

Netskope can decrypt the SSL/TLS traffic between client and server and inspect that data's content in real-time. Furthermore, Netskope can identify and prevent the movement of sensitive data by utilising its unique cloud-based DLP capabilities both for data in motion and data at rest. Simultaneously, granular control and ease of implementation allow for minimal false-positive rates and detailed event logging.

Threat Protection

Netskope can also inspect the traffic for unwanted malware that cyber-criminals might have unleashed for financial profit and corporate damage. Primarily cloud services represent a very effective attack vector since they can unwillingly contribute to the spread of the malicious payloads all over the network. Netskope Research Labs is a dedicated team focused on the constant improvement and effectiveness of the Netskope's threat protection. Moreover, Netskope uses multi-layer defences including antivirus, pre-execution script analysis and heuristics, bare-metal sandboxing, machine learning, anomaly detection and information leveraged from 3rd party threat intelligence.

Zero-Trust Network Access

The Netskope ZTNA allows access to private applications while at the same time protecting the data and resources with application-level access control, based on the identity and device security posture. Moreover, ZTNA allows for direct and secure access to public cloud services without the obligation to hairpin via the corporate infrastructure. This feature results in the improvement of end-user experience while at the same time ensures the security of internet access, by using a scalable cloud-based platform that brings together ZTNA, CASB, SWG, and DLP technologies.

Visibility and Control

Netskope also allows for the discovery of all managed and unmanaged cloud apps being used by employees, while at the same time provides information about the security posture of those applications. Importantly, Netskope also allows for a granular activity monitoring of remote workers within cloud apps for data loss prevention and forensic investigations.

Key use cases

Netskope's technologies mentioned above can be used to encounter some of the most common issues corporations face in the work environment. At the same time, the COVID-19 health crisis has made some use cases more relevant now more than ever.

1. Companies need to have visibility and control over user behaviour when accessing cloud apps and website.

Solution

• Steer all traffic though Netskope's cloud infrastructure where you will be able to monitor activities such as login, logout, upload, download, share, post, view, edit and many more,
• Apply different policies on managed/corporate instances of apps and personal instances. (e,g Employees are allowed to use enterprise Cloud Storage but not personal)

2. Users are accessing unsafe websites and applications all the time

Solution

• Apply URL filtering and alert users with custom templates recommending low-risk applications.
• Apply policies to both cloud application and web sites to deny access to high-risk applications.

3. Users receive malicious phishing emails with malware that can spread all over the infrastructure.

Solution

• Apply real-time protection for all web traffic, apps, and cloud services on the managed environment.
• Provide threat protection over unmanaged devices trying to access managed cloud services.

4. Users, maliciously or not, exfiltrate data from the company's managed clouds to personal cloud apps or storage.

Solution

• Create DLP policies and enforce them on all cloud applications and web services
• Inspect files while in transit for sensitive data
• Block the post, share, download or upload of sensitive data
• Bring in context including user, device, location, app, app instance, activity and content to increase activity
• Apply exact match, fingerprinting, dictionary and rules to minimise false-positive occurrences.

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