Exploring SaaS security best practices

SaaS adoption continues to grow at breakneck speeds. The boilerplate employee in organizations of ane,000 or more typically uses at least 10 applications; while across the company, over 200 applications will be consumed across all departments. In larger organizations, the figures are even higher. Organizations and their workers can cull from thousands of applications, with over 7,000 available for the Sales & Marketing departments lonely. A new generation of IT workers volition never have the joy of managing application updates beyond their user base. So lamentable! Their new joy will be tracking downward and agreement the breadth of applications being used by their workforce.

The fact is that the SaaS model, among other things, has democratized the software market, creating the opportunity for commercial success fifty-fifty for the smallest of entrepreneurs. This has unlocked a tremendous amount of creativity and the power to address whatsoever number of needs of knowledge workers with highly specialized applications solving narrow problems. There are two furnishings that issue: i) a shift from application suites to best-of-breed applications and 2) the frequent uptake rate of new applications amplified by the “freemium” model. Freemium to the user, maybe, but not the Information technology organization which has typically invested in 1 or more applications, probably a suite, to enable the global system.

As the number of applications in use increases, two major issues stand out that can have a negative effect on the organisation, and must be addressed with SaaS security controls. A mantra of the modern software world is self-documenting applications that also have a significant investment in UX to make users reasonably cocky-sufficient. Unfortunately, each additional application is one more skill everyone has to be leveled up on. With an barrage of applications being promoted past various members of a team, favorites begin to play out, encouraging islands of users migrating to their preferred applications. The CISO’south team will ordinarily have no knowledge of these incremental applications, making Information technology and SaaS security audits more than cumbersome — if not downright impossible.

The security implications can be pregnant, especially for applications that store sensitive data in the cloud, such as clear text files.  Data leakage can cause direct impairment to the organization equally well as to their reputation. With the number of applications out there, the skilful news is that IT doesn’t take to be the department of “no.” Merely they do need to be brought into the decision-making process for onboarding applications. It, together with users, can collaborate to create a SaaS tech stack with the requisite SaaS security standards that meets everyone’s needs, including the CISO. Having controls is essential; knowing what to look for and what’s been agreed to makes the task a lot easier and helps to diminish the unpleasant task of cutting off valuable applications and creating dissatisfaction.

SaaS application security is a winner for everyone, from the content developer and engineering to the CISO, as organizations align around a common set up of tools and channels. Productivity tin blossom when employees aren’t distracted and confused by a disjointed collection of choices. CISOs can focus on managing risk on a manageable number of applications, greatly increasing security balls and minimizing the overhead of security audits. And management can then begin to unlock the potential in the workforce that was promised by SaaS in the first place.

For more information, check out our cloud and network security page. Continue an eye out for more discussions on the implications on going direct to deject.