Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that provides comprehensive visibility, data control, and threat protection across an organization's cloud application landscape. As organizations adopt hundreds of SaaS applications—many without IT approval—Defender for Cloud Apps discovers shadow IT by analyzing traffic logs and OAuth connections, building a complete catalog of cloud services in use and assessing each application's risk profile against more than 90 risk factors.

For sanctioned applications including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, and hundreds of others, Defender for Cloud Apps connects via API to monitor user activity, detect anomalous behavior, and enforce data governance policies. Conditional Access App Control extends this protection to real-time session monitoring, allowing organizations to apply granular controls such as blocking downloads of sensitive files to unmanaged devices or requiring step-up authentication for risky actions.

The platform's data loss prevention capabilities extend sensitivity labels and DLP policies to cloud applications, scanning files at rest and in transit for sensitive content such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or custom data patterns. When policy violations are detected, automated actions can quarantine files, revoke sharing links, apply encryption, or notify administrators.

Threat detection leverages behavioral analytics and machine learning to identify compromised accounts, insider threats, and suspicious application activity. Defender for Cloud Apps correlates signals across the Microsoft 365 Defender suite—integrating with Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Office 365—to provide unified investigation and response across the full attack chain from cloud application abuse to endpoint compromise.