Gartner recently published a report that highlights a trend that we have been experiencing over the past few years, namely, the growing number of enterprises wrestling with cloud data security, cloud compliance, and cloud data residency issues associated with storing and processing sensitive information in SaaS cloud applications. Gartner estimates that by 2016, 25% of enterprises will secure access to cloud-based services using what they term a Cloud Access Security Broker platform and that these platforms will reduce the cost of securing access by 30%. Based on what we have seen from our clients, I think the cost savings are a low estimate.
The report also highlights an important consideration that our enterprise clients have told us is critical to their IT departments. Gartner recommends that companies strongly consider a “unified” Cloud Access Security Broker solution that is capable of providing multiple security policy enforcement capabilities from a single platform in order to avoid separate siloed solutions. It is clear that this capability alone could be the driver for significant savings in the enterprise.