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We’ve all heard about data exfiltration, or the unsanctioned removal of data, especially sensitive data, from an enterprise. Most organizations that are considering investing in a cloud access security broker (CASB) put this use case at the top of their list as they know that an increasing amount of data is leaving their environment through unsanctioned cloud services, most of which enable data sharing.
But one thing we don’t hear as often is the use case of data infiltration. That said, for many data exfiltration situations, there is an infiltration on the other end, and sometimes this happens – gasp! – in our own organizations! We’re starting to hear more about this use case as IT and security professionals (unhappily) are finding their organizations on the receiving end of a new employee’s unsanctioned data exfiltration from their prior company.
Think of it this way: A new employee joins your ranks from a competitor. They bring their “stuff” with them – framed photos of their family, books for their bookshelf, maybe a plant for their desk, and perhaps a BYOD mobile device or laptop computer. What about a USB stick with some useful documents on it? Well, today it’s easier than ever to get that “stuff” into the new work environment because they no longer need a computer or even a USB, but simply a browser. They can go to their personal (or their prior company’s instance of) OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive – or any number of the hundreds of cloud storage services – to access those files. An infiltrated file may be a nostalgic photo of the new employee celebrating with old colleagues, an old memo template that they like to use, or…a proprietary contract. That’s where the line goes from completely benign to maybe risky to definitely not kosher!
There are several ways to skin this cat within a CASB, depending on how aggressive you