The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model witnesses adoption among leading organizations for accessing software as an application hosted on the cloud. On the other hand, security posture implies built-in resilience for organizations to prevent threats or challenges such as misconfigurations, loss of sensitive data, misuse of user authentication, and so on. It is recommended that two areas must be essentially covered by organizations while focusing on security posture management, namely, SaaS security posture management and cloud security posture management.
Cloud Security Access Brokers, or CASBs, have been helping organizations protect the in-house data flow while reinforcing their security policies. Gartner says that the expected growth of CASBs will remain higher than all other information security service providers. In 2020, their growth was recorded at over 30%. User and entity behavior analysis and cloud security posture management are being encompassed as key features for SaaS governance and protection.
Why is SaaS Security Posture Management Important?
Organizations are shifting their critical systems to SaaS models. According to Gartner, SaaS accounts for the largest market share compared to IaaS and Paas. The revenues from SaaS market are forecast to surpass US$ 120 Bn in 2021. Most organizations depend on popular, strategic applications of SaaS for driving common operations. The protection of assets and user data in applications falls in the hands of security teams. While most SaaS applications offer some security functions, most organizations are yet on the hook to configure these appropriately.
Following are some of the reasons why SaaS security posture management is indispensable for organizations.
- The admin must poll all applications in regular intervals for ensuring the prevention of any drift in configurations. They are also required to remember the accurate settings while monitoring continuously for changes.
- SaaS configurations usually go haywire in many menus available contained by application consoles. The operations and security teams are expected to familiarize with the appropriate locations for pinpointing and managing these configurations.
- Applications have their own configurations along with their own way of interpreting common controls, such as data sharing and identity and access management (IAM). Organizations are prompted to understand key offerings of every application as well as impacts of configuration settings on SaaS security posture.
- Modern applications comprise numerous configurations to control the files that can be shared across a wide range in G Suite, wherein users are allowed to login without multi-factor authentication. Organizations that tend to depend on default settings often risk failures.
Evolutions in the SaaS environment are unabated and dynamic. A growing number of unmanaged applications, utilized in leading organizations globally, tend to make it difficult for IT departments to have robust control or clear visibility. Initially, the bottleneck was to secure huge SaaS platforms. However, the new challenge is associated with the cloud-first mindset, wherein organizations often use applications that have not yet been approved for use, thereby putting data at risk.
To Sum Up
The future for SaaS is CSPM. SSPM, the compilation of automation and security tools, enables organizations to gain high visibility and effectively manage their SaaS security posture. While CSPM focuses on the public cloud’s security posture, such as AWS, SaaS security posture management dives into services related to servers that organizations do not have control over.
Embrace SaaS with a cloud-first mindset. Meanwhile, Cloudlytics can take care of your security posture. Book a free consultation here.
