SaaS Security Posture Management With Misconfigured SaaS Settings

Not all but most of the organizations in today’s world, which is full of cybercriminals and cybercrime groups, are mainly concerned about their cloud security situation or reputation. What’s even more concerning for organizations is the SaaS (Software-as-a-service) Security Posture Management (SSPM).

A recent attack faced and revealed by Malwarebytes explained how they were targeted by the nation-state attackers/hackers, who were also involved in the SolarWinds Supply-Chain Attack, by exploiting the privileged access to Azure and Microsoft 365 environments, revealed through an investigation over the incident.

Threats like account hijacking, insider threats, and several types of breaches and data leaks are generally and oftenly faced by organizations and companies mainly due to errors in SaaS settings. Key management, misconfigurations, credential access, inadequate identity checks, and insufficient legacy protocols are some of the most common SaaS setting errors.

The SaaS Security Posture Management has been defined by Gartner, which is a global research and advisory firm, in its Hype cycle for cloud security, 2020, as a resolution that manages the security posture of SaaS apps and constantly monitors and analyses the security risks.

SaaS providers builds-in a host of security services that are developed to secure the organization/company and its user data. But still, configuration errors and potential vulnerabilities occur from time to time and the only reason is the organization’s poor management for configurations and user roles resulting in such issues.

The best that a security team does is that they work for days and weeks analyzing and fixing the settings manually and only restarts the complete process when a new user or app is added or a software receives an update.

In the worst-case scenario, an organization just ignores the threats it is exposed to and keeps working without any security measure as these organizations/companies aren’t capable of protecting themselves from potential threats that they cannot see.

However, the right SSPM solutions cannot emerge quickly, but still, the right solutions of SSPM can reduce stress and workload, save valuable time for the security team, and also can serve services for the organization’s SaaS security posture like visibility detection and remediation.

SSPM solutions/tools can ensure constant SaaS security by providing constant, active, and automated surveillance of all SaaS apps. SSPM solutions/tools should at least provide the below-mentioned features and services.

Constant Monitoring

It should never be a one-time set-up and process. When policies are set they should be enforced and monitored constantly, i.e., 24/7.

Integrations

It is a fact that some of the applications are often used much more intensely than others and an error caused due to a user role or misconfiguration could easily leave an endpoint open for an attack, data breach, or data leak. Therefore, one should be capable of monitoring/screening all their SaaS applications, ranging from dashboards, customer support tools, video conferencing platforms, workspaces, and HR management systems to messaging applications, content, marketing platforms, file-sharing applications, etc.

Remediation

Finding, analyzing, and observing a problem, flaw or vulnerability is just the basic part, and fixing or overcoming is a completely different but critical part. Automated remediation of misconfigurations should be served.

Built-in security frameworks & benchmarks

By analyzing the policies of your company, best practices, and industry compliance standards, risks and security checks and measures could be easily determined. By utilizing an SSPM solution you can manipulate and bring the compliance and security levels to match your standards.

Easy and quick implementation

You should be able to connect and access a company’s SaaS app ecosystem within seconds or minutes and all the security risks and safety measures should be served on your screen in an easy understanding mannered dashboard.

The actual fact is that any company or organization is as safe and secure as a weak SaaS user role or its security configuration. The chances are generally very high that would there be errors in SaaS configuration or user roles and their permissions. One should utilize SaaS Security Posture management solutions or tools to stay in a better position and safe & secure.

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