Skyfence Networks, the company that automates cloud app protection, today emerged from stealth mode and announced the Skyfence Cloud Gateway. Founded by former executives from Imperva and Websense, Skyfence enables organizations to protect against the leading threats identified by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA): account/service traffic hijacking and malicious insiders. Skyfence integrates threat prevention, activity monitoring and compliance management to secure and prevent data theft on any cloud app.

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"There are many benefits to moving enterprise applications to the cloud, however there are also inherent and constantly evolving risks. We need to enable cloud initiatives while maintaining our rigorous security standards," said Kelly White, Vice President, Security Architecture and Assurance for Salt Lake City-based Zions Bank. "We are excited about Skyfence's ability to provide complete visibility into user activity in the cloud along with automated, real-time analysis in order to identify cyber-attacks and inside threats as soon as they occur. This is what we need to keep up with the adoption of SaaS applications by the business."

Threat Prevention: No Policies, No Problem

To protect cloud apps against the theft of legitimate user credentials by hackers or their abuse by malicious insiders, Skyfence has developed Dynamic User Fingerprinting TM technology. It can detect and block security breaches in real time without human intervention or the need to define any security policies. Dynamic User Fingering automatically analyzes network traffic and learns user activity without directly accessing the application. It creates a profile of each user based on access location, devices, recent activity, usage patterns and other parameters. This enables Skyfence to detect and prevent account hijacking due to stolen credentials, man-in-the-middle attacks from a compromised endpoint and insider attacks.

"As a rapidly growing airline with a mobile workforce using cloud apps that can be accessed anywhere we need visibility into account access and to make sure user accounts are not being hijacked. Skyfence provides that visibility with automatic anomaly detection," said Robert Markel, Director of Information Security for Virgin America.

In addition to its automated threat prevention capabilities, Skyfence enables security teams to set policies defining how, when and where SaaS users can access data.

Single View Across all Cloud Apps

With multiple cloud apps being deployed across most organizations, it's impossible for IT departments to manually monitor user activity. Skyfence serves as a single gateway for all SaaS apps that provides the visibility and security businesses need to embrace, not block, cloud usage. Since Skyfence monitors activity down to individual data objects, not just at the URL level, it provides unprecedented insights. From a single unified dashboard, Skyfence allows IT to easily view:

  • Data usage: Who viewed or modified what, when, and how often
  • Administrator activity: Including settings, permissions, and data access
  • API activity: External access to SaaS data through an API

"All of the organizations we have spoken with know and are concerned that their confidential data in cloud apps is at risk if a user's credentials are stolen and they lack the ability to monitor activity in any meaningful way," said Ofer Hendler, CEO of Skyfence. "Using our expertise in deep protocol analysis, we have built a transparent product that can just as easily detect attacks that come from inside or outside organization, and is able to monitor and capture all activity in any cloud app. The response we are hearing from customers is a sigh of relief."

Bringing the Cloud into Compliance

To address compliance obligations, Skyfence enables separation of duties between SaaS administrators and IT security, and maintains an audit trail of all user access ranging from login events to a full activity log. At the click of a button, Skyfence can instantly generate activity reports for compliance audits and exposure reports for forensic analysis.

Deployment, Availability and Pricing

The Skyfence Cloud Gateway integrates with SAML authentication mechanisms, can be deployed in-line or in sniffer mode, and is available as a cloud service or an on-premise appliance. It does not require the installation of endpoint software. Skyfence is available immediately from the company and its business partners worldwide. Pricing is based per user per year.

Resources:

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About Skyfence

Founded in 2012, Skyfence is the company that automates cloud app protection. The Skyfence Cloud Gateway uses Dynamic User Fingerprinting TM technology to detect and block account takeover attempts, insider attacks and data theft in real time. Skyfence centrally monitors all activity in any cloud service for complete visibility, control and auditability in one scalable, cost-effective solution. For more information visit: www.skyfence.com

Marc Gendron PR
Marc Gendron, 781-237-0341
marc@mgpr.net