New Masergy CASB Offering Combats 'Shadow IT'

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Masergy on Monday unveiled its new managed cloud access security broker (CASB) offering for managing SaaS security risks.

The company has extended its unified enterprise security managed detection and response (MDR) platform to include managed CASB. It’s partnering with Bitglass for a turnkey offering that includes visibility, threat detection and response, data protection, and identity and access management.

Masergy also can augment existing Netskope and Skyhigh CASB deployments with managed monitoring and response services.

Masergy’s Jay Barbour

Jay Barbour, Masergy’s director of security product management, tells Channel Partners that his company’s partners now can offer their enterprise customers a comprehensive managed security solution with its detection and response platform with integrated SaaS security.

“Managed CASB helps all partners, whether they are just entering the security space or are looking to increase their cloud security capabilities, turn their customers into IT ‘enablers’ by giving them the ability to confidently say yes to cloud apps and BYOD,” he said. “Monitoring and response is a critical component of effective cloud security. Even with a great CASB deployed, if no one is monitoring the alerts, you can still encounter massive security problems. That’s why Masergy integrated its machine-learning-enabled managed detection and response platform service with leading CASB technologies from providers like Bitglass, Netskope, and Skyhigh.”

Shadow IT – hardware or software within an enterprise that’s not supported by the organization’s central IT department – has been a negative trend for years because it’s so difficult to combat, Barbour said. Masergy managed CASB does “more than most disparate security products by providing a solution that scales across all cloud applications while adding visionary deployment options, integrated identity and access management solutions, and comprehensive detection and response on top of that,” he said.

“Ultimately our approach creates low channel conflict,” he said. “If a potential customer has a CASB solution deployed from one of the technology partners previously listed, then the Masergy channel partner can add monitoring and response for fast time to value. Essentially we’re enabling our partners to become a one-stop shop for cloud security.”

According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CASB, cloud is expected to consume a larger portion of enterprise IT budgets, with cloud spending growing eight-fold from $100 billion to $800 billion by 2027. CASB budgets are anticipated to be 7-13 percent of enterprise SaaS spend.

“As SaaS adoption accelerates and enterprises shift more applications to the cloud, securing this environment has become one of the most critical challenges facing security and IT decision makers,” said Chris MacFarland, Masergy’s CEO. “Shadow IT has further complicated the ability of enterprises to gain visibility and control of the applications employees use every day. Our managed CASB solution helps organizations quickly and scalably mitigate risk in this new IT environment.”