Do you really know what’s going on inside your SaaS apps?

The trends in modern workplace technology have made visibility more challenging than ever before. With work shifting to the browser via SaaS and web apps, organizations struggle to see what’s actually happening in their own workplace. Like cheap concert tickets, there’s always some sort of obstruction getting in the way, making the crystal clear picture impossible to see.

Island’s Enterprise Browser is the backstage pass organizations have been waiting for. It delivers a whole new level of visibility with high-fidelity logging for web applications. By using a browser built for the enterprise, customers gain an unobstructed view of all applications, devices, and users in their natural environment. Security events are immediately visible, making incident response and investigation a matter of minutes instead of hours or days.

Why the browser?

The browser holds a unique position in the tech stack: it’s the natural point of termination for encryption; it’s the application that users interact with most; it sees and knows all actions taking place within a given web application. In essence, the browser is the operating system for web applications. But until now, organizations have not had visibility into this critical layer.

Giving you that insight is at the core of what the Enterprise Browser delivers organizations. It solves a growing pain point for companies managing the combination of SaaS applications and distributed hybrid workforce. Network-based tools lose visibility when users and applications move off the corporate network. Endpoint protection agents lack the dexterity to capture what’s happening inside SaaS applications. When employees work from home and connect to SaaS applications, the browser becomes the critical point for instrumenting activity logging.

Getting started with Island is remarkably easy. Island can be installed on any type of device, desktop or mobile, managed or unmanaged, even BYOD. The Enterprise Browser is built on Chromium, same as Chrome and Edge, so web application compatibility is 100% and the user experience is immediately familiar.

Visibility that’s crucial for both IT and Security

IT and Security teams depend on visibility across the enterprise. IT teams need to understand which applications are actually being used, shedding light on the “shadow IT” problem. Security teams need to understand where critical data travels as well as the context of how it gets there. Incident response teams must identify the depth and breadth of the impact of a malicious action — fast. Yet many of the trends in workplace technology make visibility into all this incredibly challenging: modern encryption standards, distributed hybrid workplaces, and SaaS evolution to name a few. Legacy solutions like network monitoring or endpoint agents are unlikely to give the degree of visibility you need.

Consider the challenge of encrypted network traffic. As outlined above, we should embrace strong encryption and avoid unnecessary encryption tampering. Yet, we’re often forced to do so just to gain visibility into end user behavior.

Instead of attempting to break and inspect encrypted traffic, the Enterprise Browser provides a point of inspection before that traffic is encrypted in the first place. This means that the browser can report rich details about the web activity, paired with contextual details like the user identity and device details. All of this information is collected by the Island Management Console, where it can be viewed directly or sent to the SIEM platform of your choice.

By instrumenting the browser for visibility, the Enterprise Browser is remarkably flexible, easily accommodating every permutation of device type, network topology, and user location. The experience for a freelance employee working on a personal laptop from their home office is no different than an employee working in the office on a fully managed desktop. And for the IT Operations staff, onboarding and enabling employees, contractors, and other third parties is dramatically simplified. Regardless of how a user connects, the Enterprise Browser offers full visibility and activity logging for all web-based activity.

Transparency that’s crucial to end users

The visibility goes both ways, with privacy indicators displayed within the browser itself. This helps to mitigate concerns about user privacy by making it clear to users when sensitive activity is logged and when casual browsing is not. To take it one step further, a BYOD user can simply close the Enterprise Browser and use their consumer browser for personal use. This deployment model makes a simple segmentation strategy to keep work and personal browsing distinct.

Fine tuned visibility - log what matters

Island offers a high degree of granularity when it comes to choosing what browser activity to log. Because the browser has full context of the user, device, and destination or app, administrators can define very precise policies to capture only what’s important. For example, a user with elevated privileges for AWS Console will have their activity within AWS closely monitored — including individual screenshots with click-location indicators to show exactly what actions they did inside the console. That same user might later browse AWS documentation, where the page URL is logged but no screenshots are necessary. Finally, if that user visits their personal banking website, their browsing activity is fully anonymized. With this granularity, the Security and IT staff get the rich detail they need, without needlessly collecting non-important activity.

A new chapter for enterprise visibility

As work moves to web applications and SaaS providers, the web browser is the logical headquarters for security controls, access management, and visibility. Island, the Enterprise Browser, is built to solve the visibility challenges presented by modern web applications and a dynamic, hybrid workforce. Finally, that crystal clear picture is right before our eyes.

Learn more at island.io

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