While cloud computing services have many benefits for companies, security remains a shared responsibility between service providers and customers. Cyber security provider F-Secure is looking to help companies secure content shared in the cloud by introducing F-Secure Cloud Protection -- a security solution that checks links and files for malicious content as they're shared through Salesforce.

The cloud has irrefutable advantages for businesses, and is enticing many companies to migrate part or all of their IT infrastructure to cloud services. And this trend is building a huge market for public cloud service providers. Gartner projects that the global market for public cloud services will grow by 16.5 percent to $204 billion in 2016.

According to Mika Ståhlberg, Chief Technology Officer, F-Secure, it's a trend that will improve security for many businesses, but with one caveat. "Security is a shared responsibility between cloud service providers and users in these ecosystems. Businesses using cloud services are responsible for the content they and their customers exchange through the service, and solutions that help secure the content are going to be a big part of securing the cloud. Salesforce enables security providers such as F-Secure to check and secure links and files to empower this holistic security approach."

F-Secure Cloud Protection leverages the real-time threat intelligence and other capabilities of F-Secure Security Cloud to verify that links and files are safe without hindering the use or performance of Salesforce. Any file or link found to be malicious is blocked and quarantined by F-Secure's solution to prevent it from spreading or being used, then logged and flagged to administrators for further analysis and action. The solution is built with both usability and security in mind, and admins can choose between different actions and customize the messages shown for users.

This approach not only prevents cyber attacks from using the cloud to spread malware, but it also allows IT admins to investigate and respond to threats, and make long term improvements to their company's security. 

"The cloud is a big IT trend, and businesses are quickly moving to take advantage of it," said Jyrki Tulokas, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, F-Secure. "As businesses increasingly migrate to the cloud, there's a lot of demand for us to bring our security technologies and expertise to these environments. So we're making efforts not only to bring our current capabilities to the cloud, but also to develop new types of protection to provide long term security and peace of mind to cloud service providers and their customers."

F-Secure Cloud Protection was originally unveiled at Dreamforce '16. F-Secure expects to launch the solution globally in 2017 while first customer pilots are under way.