Many organizations are not using web protections for their mobile employees, noted Anne Aarness, senior product marketing manager at McAfee. “The mobile employees may log into the web from a coffee shop or hotel. While they might have endpoint protection, they don’t have consistent protection”, she told Infosecurity.
“When the workers are on the network in the office, they might have URL filtering policies in place that would block them from visiting certain prohibited sites. When they are on the road, none of that applies if they are not using consistent web protection”, Aarness observed.
To address the cloud-related risks posed by mobile workers, McAfee’s new cloud security platform includes a client proxy that simplifies authentication and redirection of web traffic from off-network user laptops to either a McAfee software-as-a-service (SaaS) web protection product or web gateway to ensure consistent, tamper-resistant security policy enforcement, regardless of location.
The McAfee cloud security platform provides a framework that enables organizations to extend their security and policy enforcement into the cloud by securing email, web, and identity management, thereby delivering a secure bridge between the enterprise and the cloud.
“We are helping organizations build a security bridge between the enterprise and the cloud. They can choose how they deploy it. We have SaaS options in the cloud and on-premise solutions. We are helping them secure three areas: web protection, email protection, and authentication”, Aarness said.
Rather than adopting the security practices and policies of each cloud vendor, McAfee cloud security platform enables businesses to extend and apply their own access and security policies into the cloud by securing all the data traffic moving between the enterprise and the cloud, as well as data being stored in the cloud, Aarness explained.