What is SaaS Security?

The B2B SaaS business model is the one that includes top businesses or organizations to access cloud-hosted software as an application of services by means of the internet. SaaS is deemed one of the primary cloud computing among three categories: Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Following are a few things discussed in this document:

  • Security Threats of SaaS - potential harm to identity, application, and data.
  • SaaS Security Risks & Vulnerabilities - The vulnerability or the loophole by which the identity, asset, or application of the organization can be harmed.
  • Latest SaaS Breaches - Examples of security breaches that occurred in SaaS environments or in the cloud.
  • SaaS Security Solutions - Example of the SaaS security solution that the cloud may be effective in helping and protecting SaaS and cloud environment of the organization.

SaaS Security Threats

Data breach

A data breach is simply a term that defines a stranger or an unauthorized user getting access to the important and critical personal data and information that is stored on the cloud. In 2020, in the United States, the number of cases with regard to data breaches reached 1001.

Abuse of cloud services

Cloud computing can be used by criminals to target their victims and use cloud services against them to harm them. Criminals may use cloud computing to target their victims and use the cloud service against them. Phishing attempts, DoS attacks, email spam, digital currency "mining" are just some examples of misuse of cloud resources.

Denial of service

The reason why DDoS attackers target cloud-based companies is that the data they have is located in the cloud, and one of the essential parts of the business models is service delivery. For that reason, the main focus of a DoS attack is the oversaturation of the capacity of the application, services, or machines that are on target. This results in denial of services to more or additional access or requests.

Source code disclosure

A few of the most critical and sensitive information is contained by the source code. The information could be configuration related, for instance, the database credential or a piece of simple information with regards to the working of the web application. In case the source code siles are revealed, there is a high probability that the attacker may exploit that information in order to identify logical flaws. This may even get serious to a chain of attacks. It would never be possible without the accessibility or availability of the source code of the application.

With Saasment you can automatically find and fix security risks to prevent human error across your cloud assets.

SaaS Security Risks & Vulnerabilities

Misconfigurations

A misconfiguration can increase the risk of sensitive and critical information getting exposed. This may include Financial Reports that might have set to the accessibility for the public on the internet accidentally, which can ultimately result in a serious breach. In addition to this, the misconfiguration is also not so visible to the conventional security testing tools because it does not exist inside an operating system of a computer or in the source code of the application. This means that misconfigurations can most of the time go unidentified and undetected, which is something in favor of the attackers.

Phishing

One of the easiest and cost-effective business tools to use is the online SaaS application. It has become the most frequently used business tool. Phishers are attracted to stealing the data related to logins to SaaS sites as they yield personal and financial data.

Account Takeover

Account compromise, usually known as the ATO, is referred to as a bad actor that gains access to a good user's account. Once it has gained that access, the imposter or the fraudster can exploit the account for various malicious and opportunistic ends. For example, it can use the stored credits, make high-value purchases, scam other users, spam, or create fake listings. As far as the SaaS companies are concerned, the fraudster may target the financial information or even exploit a customer's data.

Data Access Risk

Access risk is focused on the risks that are linked with unbefitting access to the systems, information, or data. In addition, it possesses the risks of the unsuitable separation of databases, duties, and risks connected with information confidentiality.

Lack of Identity GRC

Lack of GRC enforcement and the IAM policy result in unauthorized access. Regrettably, the businesses are accepting this challenge all along. They are failing with approximately 80% of the companies in creating their internal cloud governance policies. However, there are policies out there due to less enforcement. It results in unauthorized access and the potential risks of breaches of critical data that may prove costly, destroying the valuation and trust of the company or an organization.

Insider Threat

The traditional security solutions' main aim is to protect from external threats; however, the change in the company's business login towards the cloud has immensely increased the new attack vector, which is referred to as the Insider Threat. An Insider Threat is a risk associated with the partners and employer who have access to the critical data and can exploit that to attain financial and personal gains.

With Saasment you can automatically find and fix security risks to prevent human error across your cloud assets.

Latest SaaS Security Breaches

April 24th, 2021 - Reverb

Reverb's database, found in the wild, contains personal and sensitive data of over 5.6 million individuals who are the users of the famous music instrument online market. It was found after it got leaked into the Dark Web. It contained names, numbers, IP addresses, and various other things.

April 12th, 2021 - ParkMobile

Software vulnerability that is deemed responsible for making 21 million records of vulnerable customers that belonged to the ParkMobile payment parking app.

February 20th, 2021 - Kroger

Third-party data breach at Accellion, a cloud solution company, allowed hackers to access the human resources data and records of pharmacy that belonged to Kroger, a supermarket giant. These include the names, phone numbers, date of births, and various other important information.

SaaS Security Solutions

Identity GRC

GRC is a software developed to assist businesses in monitoring and attaining an overview of the IT asset on a platform that is deemed centralized. The administrators can create an inventory of the IT structure of an organization and configure the rights of access of the external and the internal users.

CASB

CASB refers to as the Cloud Access Security Broker. It is a cloud-hosted solution that is placed among the customer endpoint and the SaaS provider. CASB solution should impose compliance and security policies all across the cloud applications. CASB solutions offer another protection layer on top of the enterprise WAF, Firewall, and endpoint security.

SaaS Detection & Response

SaaS Detection & Response is an approach to SaaS Security that enables the security teams to protect SaaS infrastructure and application from inside threats, account compromise, and misuse of access. SDRs offer consolidated and continuous visibility about the user's activities across these services and identify to access the various cloud services. SDR enables security teams to identify the threats and risks, detect the rising security problems actively, and promptly inspect and counter the incidents.

Data Loss Protection

DLP is a group of processes and tools that are utilized to make sure that the sensitive data remains and is not lost, accessed by, or misused by unauthorized individuals. DLP software classifies confidential, regulated, and central business data. It detects the policy violations determined by the companies or inside an already establish policy pack, which is usually driven by the GDPR, PCI-DSS, or HIPPA.

Saasment Agentless SaaS Security

With Saasment, you find and fix security risks to prevent human error across your cloud assets. We help organizations to detect and prevent misconfigurations across 40+ applications, and maintain continuous compliance tracking. Instead of waiting for security breach to happen, get ongoing visibility to your security & compliance configurations across all your Cloud Apps.

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