Although the cloud is the most convenient – and modern – platform for business computing, it poses its own unique security challenges. These challenges can only be addressed using tools that were specifically created for keeping it safe.

Here’s our list of the best cloud security tools:

  • CrowdStrike Falcon (FREE TRIAL) A cloud-based next-gen endpoint protection solution that can take care of almost any connected device; light, with a tiny digital footprint and yet powerful enough to tackle attacks like zero-day exploits and shell injections. Start 15-day free trial.
  • Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Next-gen SaaS security system ideal for protecting complex distributed network architectures; identifies and protects against email, phishing, and policy non-compliance and also offers backup.
  • Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Popular online protection service that keeps millions of websites safe and effectively connected; also protects networks by acting like a reverse-proxy, effectively preventing DDoS attacks.
  • Zerospam Protects corporate email servers by fighting against threats like ransomware and spear-phishing; a highly effective, easy to use security tool with performance enhancement capabilities when used in tandem with other Zerospam products.
  • TOPIA Cloud security tool that collects data on assets and analyzes it to find threats and rank them according to their severity; applies Patchless Protection and in-memory protection to defend a network.
  • Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security Cloud-based defense system to protect workloads, network layers, and storage services; also serves as an antivirus, Intrusion Detection System (IDS), and vulnerability management system.
  • Rubrik Ideal for complex network architectures this tool uses backups that are searchable for pin-pointed restoration as a way to protect data; it saves the backups securely so that even if it is breached, it is of no use to the intruders.
  • Orca Security An agentless SaaS security tool for popular public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, etc.); immediate discovery of assets across complex networks supporting multi-operating systems that are quickly assessed for ambiguities and, in case of issues, flagged for resolution.
  • Splunk Enterprise Security Machine data analysis software platform that helps admins collect, analyze, and visualize data from digital assets in any network; can be further enhanced with modules for advanced detection and investigation of abnormal activity.
  • Zscalar Suite of cloud-based security tools ideal for protecting users of on-demand software; can work as a gateway as well as a tunnel for private usage (better than a VPN), for an enhanced UX.

The best Cloud Security Tools

Using this set of criteria, we looked for edge services that provide system protection for cloud-based and on-premises assets.

Our methodology for selecting a cloud security system

We reviewed the market for cloud security tools and analyzed the options based on the following criteria:

  • Cloud-based services that can cover hybrid systems
  • Cloud workload protection services for virtual servers
  • Cloud security posture management services for system hardening
  • Multiple systems that are delivered from a common edge platform
  • Alerts for security problems
  • A free trial or a demo package for an assessment opportunity without risk
  • Value for money, represented by an efficient edge service that is available at a fair price

1. CrowdStrike Falcon (FREE TRIAL)

CrowdStrike Falcon is a suite of next-generation endpoint protection software solutions that detect, prevent, and respond to attacks. Being a cloud-based security tool, it can be implemented in any business environment. This is also why all major operating systems – including Windows, macOS, and Linux – are supported.

Features:

  • Falcon can be run by the client or as SaaS
  • Light digital footprint yet can cover the whole cloud architecture
  • Flexible bundles mean the clients get only the features that they need

It is also a flexible cloud security tool that can be used to protect a versatile list of online devices – anything from servers in the cloud to everyday IoT devices found in a kitchen.

Falcon can be managed by the client businesses themselves or run as SaaS by CrowdStrike. Either way, this cloud-based protection tool has a tiny digital footprint: it uses a small, lightweight sensor; it takes five seconds to install; and runs silently in the background as it only requires 1.5 MB bandwidth.

Businesses can configure the Falcon platform components to protect their networks in any manner they choose. Once set up, it helps prevent various attack methods like – malware and zero-day exploits – as well as exposing phishing and OS shell injection attempts.

Falcon uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to keep on top of new threats; it is also kept current by agents located across the world who update the system based on information gained from hackers, activists, and other sources of intelligence.

Customers have the option of choosing just one – or all – of the suite’s security tools which, when combined, form a complete security parameter around a network architecture. Examples of these tools include Falcon Prevent for next-gen antivirus protection, Falcon Intelligence for threat intelligence, and Falcon Firewall Management for perimeter defense. You can start on a 15-day free trial.

Pros:

  • Doesn’t rely on only log files to threat detection, uses process scanning to find threats right away
  • Acts as a HIDS and endpoint protection tool all in one
  • Can track and alert anomalous behavior over time, improves the longer it monitors the network
  • Can install either on-premise or directly into a cloud-based architecture
  • Lightweight agents won’t slow down servers or end-user devices

Cons:

  • Would benefit from a longer 30-day trial period

2. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

EDITOR’S CHOICE

CrowdStrike Falcon is our top choice for a cloud security tool because it covers endpoints and networks and it offers a flexible range of components. You can choose whether to add on extra features, such as a threat intelligence feed – the final composition of the package is up to you. The system also offers a firewall manager and device controls as extras.

Get a 15-day free trial of Falcon Prevent: https://go.crowdstrike.com/try-falcon-prevent.html

Operating system: Cloud based

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is a cloud-based, SaaS cloud security system. As a matter of fact, it is a next-generation collection of physical, virtual, and cloud-based appliances that protect and enhance the performance of a dispersed network infrastructure.

  • Protection from end-to-end: emails, apps, network, and data
  • Application profiling, web filtering, anti-spam
  • Intrusion detection and prevention
  • Advanced threat and malware protection
  • Full-fledged network access control

It is a solution that can be used to optimize the performance of a distributed network; it is easy to scale across any device combination or distributed network infrastructure. It can also easily be administered from a single-window – regardless of the asset types on the network – where admins can configure their own sets of rules and policies, manage software patches and upgrades.

Barracuda offers many other products which means CloudGen can be integrated with them to extend the security cover and offer all-around protection of both software and hardware assets: email protection, secure backup, and AI-based protection from phishing attacks. There’s even a cloud scanner to check for security policy compliance.

This is a great cloud security tool for larger businesses that need to stay on top of the safety and connectivity of complex and dispersed network infrastructures.

  • The interface is easy to use and scales well when monitoring multiple networks and wide-scale access rules

  • Features a built-in IDS to help alert to port scans and other pre-attack events

  • Ideal for more complex networks – great for enterprises

  • The NexGen Admin dashboard is highly customizable and offers many different ways to report and visualize firewall insights

  • Suited more for enterprises, many features can be too much for smaller networks

  • No free trial must manually request an evaluation version from their sales team

3. Cloudflare

Cloudflare is another company that offers popular and reliable cloud security tools that speed up and protect millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and devices connected to the Internet.

  • Defense for apps, APIs, and websites – the face of a business
  • Protection of networks from external attacks
  • Solutions also offer optimized, secure connectivity between connected devices

It is a multi-purpose company that has been relied on to provide protection on anything from the cloud server and services to domain names and CMS installations.

Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) helps keep your websites and applications secure from OWASP Top Ten CMS vulnerabilities. It has more than 145 rules to protect from almost all types of web application attacks.

This is just one tool from the Cloudflare arsenal that helps protect whole infrastructures. The company runs one of the world’s largest networks – of more than 100 data centers, in 200 cities all over the world – that powers over 10 trillion requests a month. This is approximately 10 percent of all Internet requests, affecting more than 2.5 billion people globally.

Apart from security, Cloudflare helps accelerate the connection between online devices. It also secures and ensures the reliability of public-facing resources like websites, APIs, and cloud applications.

In the case of cloud infrastructures, Cloudflare increases connection security and reliability with features like a reverse proxy that performs load balancing, offers firewall capabilities, and provides protection from DDoS attacks.

  • Boasts one of the largest server networks for hosting and DDoS mitigation

  • Highly scalable – works for small and enterprise-sized cloud environments

  • Offers features such as reverse proxy, access control, DNS and CDN services

  • Focuses mainly on protecting public facing-applications

Finally, Cloudflare also offers more services like CDN and DNS for free.

4. Zerospam

Your email is a critical part of your corporate cloud system and Zerospam is the perfect tool to keep your messaging system safe.

  • 100 percent cloud-based
  • All rounded advanced protection that needs no “babysitting”
  • Round-the-clock central support from the Zerospam team

Zerospam, a tool created for small-to-medium businesses, is a cloud-based email security tool that offers protection that harnesses AI-powered filtering technology allowing it to act both as an antivirus as well as an anti-spam solution. Some of the threats that it can tackle include ransomware, zero-days, Business Email Compromise (BEC), spear phishing, and more.

Although it is highly effective in preventing attacks, it is also simple to use. And with it being a SaaS, there is nothing to install or update. Client’s just need to change their MX records and they are automatically protected; software updates and system support are handled by the engineers at Zerospam.

In fact, there are even more products for clients looking for more expansive protection of their architecture. Zerospam can achieve additional capabilities to check configuration and communication of servers (ZeroPrefilter), scanning emails (ZeroScan), scanning attachments (ZeroMalware), and protection against scamming, spoofing, etc. (ZeroPhishing and ZeroPhishing Advanced).

  • Runs in the cloud, no need for onboarding or complex installation

  • Operates across 20 different sites, giving it increased reliability

  • Anti-spam has a low false-positive rate, helping avoid lost business-related emails to the spam filter

  • Leverages AI to reduce false positives and automatically adapt to evolving threats

  • Could use better management features for multiple inboxes

  • Hosted in Canada, may be slower if located elsewhere in the world

5. TOPIA

TOPIA is another innovative cloud security system that collects data across a digital infrastructure to recognize and mitigate vulnerabilities before they become threats. Businesses can use this vulnerability management software to detect, analyze, and remedy cybersecurity threats.

  • App and OS auto-recognition
  • Asset and app real-time threat analysis, security patch management
  • Prediction, identification, analysis, and remedy recommendation

TOPIA helps admins apply a consistent, comprehensive, and clear approach to identifying and resolving security threats and risks. The tool’s threat analyzer helps to show a business’ assets’ threat levels and then offers recommendations for treating or handling the most critical of them.

This tool also offers real-time patch management to make sure your tech environment is current and up-to-date. In case there are no patches, TOPIA’s Patchless Protection takes care of the assets on the network by surrounding it in a defensive dome over the most vulnerable assets with the help of in-memory protection.

Add to this the fact that TOPIA has an amazing GUI which offers a pleasant user experience (UX) means that, apart from practicality, it is a pleasure to work with as admins can easily see any threats and effectively respond to them. They can control their whole domain, in real-time, and have a comprehensive inventory of all the active workstations and servers at their disposal.

Admins can, therefore, focus on reducing vulnerabilities with the help of real-time contextual app vulnerability and asset-risk analysis combinations. These map the whole digital infrastructure for easier prediction, detection, prioritization, and handling of issues.

6. Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security

  • Focuses more on vulnerability management to prevent attacks

  • Provides a comprehensive approach to cloud security across multiple vendors

  • Offers remediation actions for each issue discovered

  • Excellent dashboard and reporting features

  • Better suited for larger organizations

Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security formerly Deep Security, the new name for Deep Security, is a cloud-based threat defense system against vulnerabilities, malware, and unauthorized access.

  • Secure servers across the data center and cloud with a single security product
  • Defense against network threats with intrusion prevention and firewall
  • Alerts triggered by unplanned system changes with integrity monitoring and log inspection
  • Global threat data is continuously updated and correlated for automatic protection

This all-inclusive security service offers protection features like runtime security for workloads (physical, virtual, cloud, and containers), cloud network layer security, serverless security, and security for cloud file and object storage services.

This is all done from a single dashboard that combines capabilities with full visibility into popular environments like Google Cloud, Azure, IBM Cloud, VMware, and AWS.

Workload Security lowers the cost and complexity of securing workloads across multiple environments and virtually shields servers from the latest advanced threats like ransomware and network-based vulnerabilities.

It can actually protect systems from previously unknown threats thanks to its machine learning and virtual patching capabilities.

Now, although this is a tool with advanced capabilities, it is still a cloud-based SaaS which means it has a small digital footprint – all that is needed to get things rolling is to install a single smart agent. That is all it takes to start protecting the architecture against vulnerabilities or ensuring policy compliance.

Other features protect against threats by acting as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS), antivirus, and vulnerability management system.

7. Rubrik

  • Unifies access control and vulnerability management across your cloud environments

  • Can protect individual runtime environments across multiple containers

  • Supports physical, virtual, public, and private cloud environments

  • Unifies monitoring of multiple cloud vendors from a single dashboard

  • Ideal for larger companies utilizing multiple cloud vendors

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to protect your data, you will find that it just isn’t enough. And sometimes, disaster does strike and you lose your data.

But, that doesn’t mean you have to close shop and slink away into oblivion. On the contrary, you should have a backup and restore system that you can rely on to protect your data and have you back on your feet again in the shortest amount of time – regardless of the amount of data lost.

  • Secure data backup ensuring nothing is lost and quickly restored in case of a disaster
  • Protected backups which make it useless to even attempt to destroy them thanks to immutable storage
  • Works well with complex cloud architecture, as well as legacy and next-gen application environments

Rubrik offers such a solution: it backs up and recovers data center and cloud data and features automatic recovery from failure. It has in-depth reporting capabilities and it is also highly scalable.

With the help of this tool, businesses can manage their backup, have access to on-demand restoration, and guarantee a secure data storage system – everything they need to ensure business continuity.

Administrators can search and recover the precise data that is needed, instead of having to restore the whole database. There is no need to be concerned about data loss or theft because Rubrik protects the data from ransomware attacks – even after it has been stored in backup – with the help of immutable storage.

Rubrik also makes it easy for backup and recovery processes in a hybrid cloud environment. In fact, it can be used to get rid of complex, legacy backup/restore processes – that don’t even guarantee recovery. Instead, this tool replaces them with a software solution that bridges legacy and next-gen applications.

8. Orca Security

  • Offers unified cloud backups – a great BDR alternative

  • Supports physical, virtual, and hybrid environments

  • Offers image-based and incremental backup/recovery

  • Supports the full lifecycle of data management

  • Must contact sales for pricing

Orca Security is a SaaS tool that delivers in-depth visibility into AWS, Azure, and GCP. It replaces legacy vulnerability assessment tools, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP).

  • Behavioral analytics
  • Intrusion detection system, threat intelligence, vulnerability management, encryption, antivirus

This is a completely agentless tool and requires no installation. It involves a simple three-step process to connect and account and start discovery, monitoring, and assessing all cloud assets, regardless of platform, network, or operating system. Even paused or stopped machines are discovered.

Once connected, Orca scans a read-only view of cloud assets that includes cloud configuration, operating systems, applications, and data.  The tool then detects vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, lateral movement risk, weak (or leaked) passwords, and high-risk data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Once the vulnerability information is compiled it is then prioritized based on the risk it poses.

This tool is an ideal tool for large enterprises as well as “born in the cloud” companies in industries such as SaaS, FinTech, Internet, media, ad tech, and pure-cloud service delivery.

Orca treats a cloud network as an interconnected web of assets. Should it find any ambiguities or errors, it can be configured to push informative alerts to Slack (or any other third-party collaboration platform where the admins hang out) and include each alert’s precise path or triggering point to help with a quick resolution.

9. Splunk Enterprise Security

  • Provides configuration management for IIS – great for backups and quick recovery from erroneous changes

  • Can aid in compliance enforcement

  • Uses agentless monitors – keeping resource utilization low

  • Can prevent the transfer for PII and company secrets

  • Must contact sales for a quote

Splunk Enterprise Security is a software platform for machine data analysis that enables customers to gather real-time Operational Intelligence on their digital investment.

  • Network, access, and endpoint protection
  • Advanced threat analysis

This security tool enables admins to search, analyze, and visualize the data gathered from all components of an IT infrastructure including data from websites, applications, sensors, devices, and more which it then stores in a searchable format.

Splunk is an analytics-driven Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) solution that uses actionable intelligence and advanced analytics to combat threats. It detects, investigates, and responds to these threats in real-time allowing for secure and no-risk operations.

Splunk Enterprise Security consists of a group of security modules known as the Splunk Security Operations Suite which includes two other packages – Splunk User Behavior Analytics, which draws on user and entity behavior analytics to stop as-of-yet unknown threats and Splunk Phantom, a tool to automate and coordinate the subsequent responses to them.

Splunk is the security platform that enables admins to perfect their security operations and reduce associated risks. From this platform, they can streamline their entire security stack, minimize unplanned downtime, and explore and visualize business processes for increased transparency.

The information that is gathered includes machine data from multi-cloud or on-premises installations that are displayed in one unified view for a quicker response. Admins can then quickly and effectively resolve the issues.

An interesting feature from Splunk is the Advanced Threat Investigation which uses advanced detection and investigative controls to detect and investigate abnormal activity that is usually associated with compromised systems.

10. Zscaler

  • Can utilize behavior analysis to detect threats that aren’t discovered through logs

  • Excellent user interface, highly visual with easy customization options

  • Easy prioritization of events

  • Offers features to create operational and business intelligence from your data

  • Available for Linux and Windows

  • Better suited for large enterprises

With Zscaler we have a comprehensive suite of security services that are also delivered from the cloud. It is the ideal tool for protecting users who use cloud applications as would be the case in clients of an On-Demand Software service provider.

  • Distributed cloud-based security for web, email, and mobile computing
  • Distributed cloud security from their data centers serves as primary data center, regardless of clients’ locations

Businesses that use this tool can protect their users by routing Internet traffic through the Zscaler Security Cloud, which is distributed across more than 100 data centers worldwide. The company’s direct-to-cloud architecture connects users to the nearest data center for an overall faster UX.

This method also cuts costs for their clients because they don’t need to purchase and manage their own network security software or devices.

One of the company’s two main services is Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA), which acts as a gateway between users and the Internet. ZIA securely connects users to externally managed applications – be they applications or Internet hosts, and regardless of device, location, or network.

The ZIA service also inspects encrypted and unencrypted Internet traffic in-line, looking for malware and advanced threats while also helping prevent corporate data leakage.

The other service, Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), offers authorized users with fast and secure access to internally managed applications hosted in enterprise data centers or in the cloud. Unlike a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which is used to connect users to a corporate network, ZPA connects a user to an application without involving the network, resulting in more secure connectivity.

Choosing a cloud security tool

While keeping the security of a cloud computing architecture can be done using several applications to take care of endpoints, servers, and networks, we can all agree the best solution would be one that covered the entire setup from end-to-end.

  • Based as a flexible cloud-based SaaS
  • Offers DLP features for file recovery and integrity monitoring
  • Can inspect SSL traffic for malicious packets
  • Excellent interface and monitoring dashboard

With that in mind, we can say Trend Micro Cloud One – Workload Security is the best of the best cloud security tool with Splunk Enterprise Security and Orca Security following close behind.

  • Visibility and compliance – Know where everything is and what its value or sensitivity is
  • Compute-based security – This is provided by vulnerability management and a SIEM
  • Network protection – Firewall-as-a-Service, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), or Zero Trust Access
  • Identity security – Identity and access management (IAM)