The current surge in SaaS adoption can mostly be attributed to the desire for enhanced productivity. We have now entered a phase where there are specialized tools available for nearly every aspect of contemporary business, making it very convenient (and tempting) for your staff to utilize these tools without adhering to the formal IT sanction and procurement process.
However, this trend has also widened the attack surface—leading to increased concerns regarding security and governance that are predominantly allocated to IT and security teams. To address this, IT leaders dealing with security need scalable solutions for identifying SaaS services and managing the expanding attack surface.
Concurrently, financial counterparts are striving to reduce technology expenses (as opposed to payrolls or workforce)—with a particular emphasis on easily manageable or excessively deployed SaaS subscriptions, estimated by Gartner to make up approximately 25% of all SaaS subscriptions.
The primary query, then, revolves around where you can diminish your SaaS attack surface (and expenses) without adversely affecting productivity. This forms the essence of efficient SaaS oversight, with Nudge Security serving as an invaluable resource.
Evaluate the current usage by your staff
As the popular adage goes, you cannot protect what you are unaware of, hence the initial step towards managing SaaS security is to compile a comprehensive inventory of the technologies actively in use and their respective users.
Nudge Security swiftly detects and classifies all SaaS applications ever introduced within the organization by any individual in just minutes. For each unveiled app, you will have visibility on the first user, a roster of all users, authentication methods, and more—empowering you to promptly ascertain the extent to which a specific app is integrated and if security best practices like MFA and SSO are implemented.
Analyze the redundancy among similar tools
It’s one thing to acknowledge that your organization uses multiple project management platforms, but before acting upon the streamlining of apps or licenses to minimize SaaS proliferation, understanding who employs which platform and for what purpose is crucial.
Nudge Security simplifies this process. For every app utilized within your organization, you can visualize a Venn diagram elucidating user commonalities among comparable apps. By interacting with the diagram, you can access the list of intersecting users across each app combination. Larger circles indicate a higher account volume for that application. Armed with this information, you can distinguish the extensively used tools crucial to productivity from those that could be phased out.
Furthermore, with Nudge Security, you can dispatch reminders to users via Slack or email (referred to as “nudges”) to validate if they are still utilizing a specific app, enabling you to ascertain which accounts are genuinely essential without resorting to numerous spreadsheets.
Evaluate and contrast provider security profiles
Alongside application popularity among your staff, the security standing of SaaS providers should be a significant criterion in determining which facets of your SaaS portfolio can be streamlined. Nudge Security can also assist in this aspect by furnishing a provider security profile for each SaaS provider used in your organization, as well as those you may wish to explore. This data accelerates and simplifies the process of completing third-party risk evaluations.
The provider profile showcases details on the provider’s security protocols, MFA practices, SSO availability, security breach history, and more—allowing you to juxtapose similar vendors and ensure that your organization selects providers aligned with your security and compliance prerequisites.
Compare expenditure data on SaaS
Nudge security streamlines the process of inputting expenditure data for each app, enabling you to comprehend the relative expenses of alternative options and identify opportunities to
Continuously control SaaS expansion
Similar to organizing your wardrobe, maintaining your SaaS ecosystem in order can be challenging. By utilizing Nudge Security, you can deploy a catalog of sanctioned applications to your employees, enabling them to easily locate and request authorization to the necessary tools.
Moreover, you can activate alerts to inform you about the introduction of new applications and automatically request details from the user to comprehend the necessity and usage of the application. When new apps are introduced, you can also prompt users to recommend a similar, approved app or justify why they require an alternate application.
An adaptable strategy for SaaS administration
In numerous organizations, the strategy for SaaS administration is fragmented, with finance reacting to one set of data, IT security examining another, and everyone speculating the most utilized application. With Nudge Security, you can ensure that risk, expense, and productivity are crucial when evaluating and devising plans for technology consolidation.
Commence a 14-day trial today at www.nudgesecurity.com/getting-started
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