5 Methods to Decrease SaaS Security Vulnerabilities

Due to the employee-driven, real-time nature of technology adoption from various locations and devices, IT and security teams are faced with a sprawling SaaS attack surface that is often unidentified or unregulated.

5 Ways to Reduce SaaS Security Risks
5 Ways to Reduce SaaS Security Risks

Due to the employee-driven, real-time nature of technology adoption from various locations and devices, IT and security teams are faced with a sprawling SaaS attack surface that is often unidentified or unregulated. This significantly heightens the chances of identity-based risks, with a recent report by CrowdStrike revealing that compromised identities, including cloud and SaaS credentials, are utilized in 80% of breaches today.

To tackle this challenge, IT security leaders require practical and efficient SaaS security strategies that can uncover and oversee their expanding SaaS presence. Here are 5 crucial methods through which Nudge Security can provide assistance.

Eliminate the visibility disparity

Comprehending the complete array of SaaS applications in use lays the groundwork for a contemporary IT governance scheme. Without a grasp of your entire SaaS landscape, definitive assertions about the storage of your corporate IP (Did someone synchronize their desktop to Dropbox?), assumptions regarding your customer data (Did someone transfer your customer list to a new marketing application?), and conclusions regarding your production data (Did someone duplicate their environment to a new AWS account for troubleshooting purposes?) cannot be made with certainty.

However, gathering and sustaining an accurate SaaS inventory is a perpetual, laborious job due to the rapid adoption of SaaS solutions. Nudge Security addresses this dilemma by offering real-time, continuous SaaS exploration that does not necessitate agents, browser extensions, network proxies, or intricate API setups. Within moments of commencing a trial, you will acquire a comprehensive list of all SaaS accounts ever established within your organization, accompanied by security insights on each application, real-time alerts for new applications, and the capability to automate governance duties related to SaaS.

SaaS Security

Supervise OAuth hazards

Presently, any employee holds the capability to link several SaaS apps and data through no-code / low-code integrations that use authorization mechanisms like OAuth grants. This results in a convoluted web of SaaS applications, making it incredibly challenging to determine “who (and which SaaS applications) possess access to my corporate resources?” Bad actors exploit this intricacy to traverse the SaaS supply chain and reach valuable assets.

Therefore, it is vital for IT and security teams to consistently examine the OAuth grants introduced to their organization to identify and rectify excessively permissive scopes and inter-application links that may conflict with data privacy and compliance standards.

This write-up offers a summary of essential steps for evaluating OAuth grants and evaluating potential risks, alongside an overview of how Nudge Security delivers the necessary insight to simplify this process.

SaaS Security

Observe your SaaS attack surface

Recent prominent breaches in the SaaS supply chain involving Circle CI, Okta, and Slack signify a trend where attackers target enterprise SaaS tools to gain access to their clients’ environments. As highlighted earlier, the intricate and interlinked nature of the contemporary SaaS attack surface enables attackers to navigate through the software supply chain to locate valuable assets.

Given this scenario, it is crucial to identify the corporate assets visible to external threats, which could potentially become a target. Arguably, the SaaS attack surface encompasses every SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS application, account, user credential, OAuth grant, API, and SaaS provider utilized in your organization—whether managed or unmanaged. Monitoring this attack surface may seem like an arduous task since any user with a credit card, or even just a corporate email address, can expand the organization’s attack surface in a matter of clicks.

Nudge Security incorporates a SaaS attack surface dashboard that displays all externally exposed assets that adversaries could observe, including SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, development tools, social media accounts, registered domains, and more. With this visibility, you can take proactive measures to reduce and safeguard your SaaS attack surface.

SaaS Security

Broaden SSO coverage

One-click authentication (SSO) establishes a central hub for managing employees’ entrance to corporate SaaS platforms, becoming a vital element of any contemporary SaaS identity and entry administration initiative. Most businesses seek to confirm the inclusion of all mission-critical applications (e.g., those managing customer data, financial data, source code, etc.) in SSO. Nevertheless, the introduction of new SaaS services outside IT governance processes presents challenges in accurately assessing SSO coverage.

Nudge Security reveals the list of SSO-enrolled apps (and those that are not) along with insights for each app, ensuring you can correctly prioritize your SSO integration endeavors. When ready to integrate new apps into your SSO platform, Nudge Security triggers SSO integration workflows to streamline the process.

SaaS Security

Widen MFA utilization

Multi-step verification enhances an additional coating of protection to safeguard user accounts from unauthorized entry. By demanding varied verification aspects, like a password and an exclusive code dispatched to a mobile device, it greatly diminishes the probability of hackers attaining access to sensitive details. This is notably crucial in the present digital sector where identity-focused attacks are progressively frequent.

Using Nudge Security, you can pinpoint which user accounts are (and aren’t) MFA-enabled, and dispatch “prompting nudges” to users via email or Slack, urging them to enable MFA for their accounts. With the vast number of applications often incorporated without IT supervision, this insight aids IT teams in guaranteeing adherence to SaaS security best practices.

SaaS Security

Commence enhancing SaaS security today

Nudge Security furnishes IT and security teams with full visibility of every SaaS and cloud entity ever established within their organizations (whether under management or unsanctioned), and real-time notifications as new accounts are set up. This visibility allows them to eradicate shadow IT, secure renegade accounts, reduce the SaaS attack surface, and automate routine tasks, all without slowing down work pace.

Begin a complimentary 14-day trial here.

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