Initiating our series on SaaS security, this post delves into the evolution from traditional on-premises solutions to cloud services, emphasizing the ease of SaaS procurement with just a credit card.

As Shadow IT transitions into the cloud, understanding and prioritizing SaaS security becomes increasingly critical for businesses, with SaaS applications now constituting 70% of company software usage, according to Adaptive Shield. In the next weeks, we will explore key cloud security capabilities and stress the significance of protecting SaaS applications, offering a comprehensive look at SaaS security challenges and strategies beyond the capabilities of cloud service providers to be included in your security strategy when enabling cloud in a secure way for your business.

In today’s cloud realm, IT and security teams mainly manage IaaS and PaaS services from providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft in an effective way, using tools like Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) to protect access, infrastructure, and workloads, alongside native controls build into the cloud stack. With the advent of Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), exemplified by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, cloud security has advanced, offering more sophisticated protection capabilities focusing on the application stack. Now, let's quickly see how these key security capabilities differentiate before highlighting specific SaaS security essentials beyond those elements.

• CASB: Mediates access between cloud users and services to enforce security policies and providing visibility into cloud application usage
• CSPM: Identifies and fixes misconfigurations in cloud infrastructures for enhanced security posture and managing compliance violations
• CWPP: Secures cloud workloads across environments with runtime protection and vulnerability management, including virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions
• CNAPP: Integrates multiple security capabilities like CSPM and CWPP to protect cloud-native applications throughout their lifecycle and across the development and deployment lifecycle. CNAPP aims to secure applications and infrastructure from code to cloud through integrated tools for visibility, compliance, and threat protection

Despite those fundamental controls for building a robust cloud security stack, protecting SaaS services requires more due to each application's unique configuration language and the risk of security drift as users change settings. Manually monitoring configurations across numerous apps is impractical, and periodic reviews offer only a temporary snapshot of security. In addition, many users integrate third-party apps into the core SaaS stack. These integrations take place without the knowledge of the security team and often ask for intrusive permission scopes, such as the ability to read, write, and delete data.

SSPM, or SaaS Security Posture Management, addresses critical security challenges by offering a dynamic and comprehensive approach. It continuously monitors for misconfigurations, manages user access, enforces policies, and detects identity-centric threats. This strategy enhances SaaS security by covering essential areas such as Data Protection, Access Control, Regulatory Compliance, and Third-Party Management. SSPM provides CISOs and IT Managers with a holistic overview of the SaaS applications in use. This brings much-needed transparency into assessing security postures.

Keep an eye out for my upcoming posts on SSPM, covering practical implementation tips and common challenges as well as the integration of SSPM into your Third-Party Management due diligence, in the weeks ahead.