Table of contents

Introduction

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption continues to rise. The pandemic accelerated the transition to cloud-based apps for critical business functions. In this report from BetterCloud, it is estimated that by 2025, 85% of business apps will be SaaS-based, therefore securing these environments is more important than ever.

To fully secure SaaS, you need complete visibility and control inside the applications themselves. This allows you to understand permissions, configurations, and activity so you can proactively improve security posture and quickly detect and respond to threats.

The Challenges of SaaS Security

Securing a complex and expanding SaaS environment poses several key challenges:

• Lack of visibility: With limited access to SaaS data and activity, you’re securing blindly. This prevents proactive hardening and makes investigating threats difficult.

• Fractional coverage: Point solutions like CASB or IAM only cover a fraction of your SaaS attack surface. You need a solution that provides complete coverage.

• Shared responsibility: While SaaS providers secure the infrastructure, you’re responsible for securing your data, users, and configurations. You need inside-out visibility to uphold your end.

• Increasing attacks: As more data moves to SaaS, attackers are hijacking accounts and exploiting misconfigurations to steal data. Legacy tools can’t keep up.

Achieving SaaS Security

To address these gaps, you need a solution focused specifically on SaaS that provides:

• Unified data visibility: Collecting and correlating data from across SaaS apps gives unified visibility into users, permissions, activities, and configurations.

• Continuous posture management: Analyze this data to identify configuration risks, review unnecessary access, and proactively improve security posture.

• Advanced threat detection: With complete visibility, machine learning can detect account compromises, data exfiltration, and insider threats early.

• Streamlined response: When threats arise, quickly determine the scope and root cause to expedite incident response.

• Extended zero trust: Verify all entities within SaaS, not just at the identity layer, to implement zero trust.

By providing complete coverage of your SaaS attack surface, an effective SaaS security solution closes visibility gaps left by legacy tools. Its inside-out approach extends zero trust deeper into your SaaS environment.