SaaS Security: Risk Mitigation and Management Guide
Business productivity generally comes down to critical applications that allow employees to interact with sanctioned services and business-critical data. Organizations are migrating to cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments in mass as hybrid work configurations continue moving forward. One of the tremendous value-adds with cloud SaaS environments is integrating third-party applications for extended features and capabilities in the environment. However, while they are great for extended features and capabilities, these add cybersecurity risks, especially considering how much sensitive information is now stored in the cloud. In this article, we are discussing cybersecurity risks associated with third-party cloud SaaS apps as well as efficient methods of application risk mitigation.
Third-party cloud SaaS applications – Extended capabilities and SaaS security risks
Not only do cloud SaaS environments like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 have robust native applications as part of the offering, but there are also thousands of third-party applications that can integrate with the cloud SaaS environment, extending capabilities and features.
These cloud SaaS apps include business tools, productivity apps, education, communication, utilities, and many others. By default, users can download and integrate third-party applications into the sanctioned cloud SaaS environment in either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
While third-party applications can add capabilities far beyond those natively provided by the cloud SaaS service provider, these introduce cybersecurity risks in the environment. How so?
Even legitimate third-party applications may have their own set of security standards, data security risks, and other concerns associated with integrating them with your business-critical data. These applications assume the permissions of the user granting it access to the environment. While it may be ok for a particular user to have the ability to read data that could be considered sensitive, it may not be ok for the application to assume these same permissions.
Third-party applications can be granted elevated permissions to all sorts of business-critical and even sensitive data due to cloud OAuth permissions delegation. OAuth permissions delegation gives an authorization token to cloud SaaS applications that allow “acting on behalf” of the user granting the OAuth token. Thus, it enables users to integrate third-party applications without the application knowing the user’s password.
Cloud SaaS OAuth tokens are persistent and even bypass two-factor authentication. As a result, they must be issued with care. For example, imagine a malicious third-party cloud SaaS application or browser plugin granted access to business-critical data in your cloud SaaS environment. It could delete, leak, or easily steal data. Worse, it could have the ability to launch a ransomware attack in the environment.
Businesses must maintain visibility and security control over cloud SaaS tools, including third-party applications and browser plugins, installed in the environment. A single malicious cloud SaaS application or browser plugin granted permissions to the environment can jeopardize a business’s entire data set from a security perspective.
Remote work leading to more security threats
The now majority remote workforce has led to further cyber threats. The now majority remote workforce has led to further cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Remote workers tend to be more distracted and laxer in overall security awareness working from home. Statistics show that remote work increases cybersecurity risks and the overall cost of a data breach. Note in the IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2021:
The average cost was $1.07 million higher in breaches where remote work was a factor in causing the breach, compared to those where remote work was not a factor. The percentage of companies where remote work was a factor in the breach was 17.5%. Additionally, organizations that had more than 50% of their workforce working remotely took 58 days longer to identify and contain breaches than those with 50% or less working remotely. IT changes such as cloud migration, and remote work increased costs, yet organizations that did not implement any digital transformation changes as a result of COVID-19 experienced $750,000 higher costs compared to the global average, a difference of 16.6%.
As employees work remotely, they may be more likely to grant permissions requested by third-party applications. Remote employees may also be more likely to fall victim to phishing attacks where an attacker masquerades a malicious application as legitimate.
For example, an employee may get an email posing as a “security update” for their cloud SaaS environment. While it is a malicious app, employees may think they are granting permissions to a sanctioned or legitimate application. A malicious application requesting permissions looks identical to any other application that may request permissions to cloud SaaS data.
In the example below, a malicious application is requesting:
- Read and write access to your mail
- Sign you in and read your profile
- Have full access to all files you have access to
- Maintain access to data you have given it access to
The malicious application can read, delete, steal, or ransomware your data with this set of permissions.
Organizations can’t rely 100% on email filtering and other security measures to filter out malicious emails before making it to the end-user mailbox. So how can organizations take control of cloud SaaS applications and ensure business-critical data is protected?
A Planned Approach to SaaS Risk Management
Considering the above, SaaS risk management is not optional—it’s essential. As organizations expand their reliance on SaaS platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, homes to a lot of sensitive data, managing the associated risks becomes a critical part of maintaining a secure IT environment. Unlike traditional software, some SaaS applications may bypass IT approval and operate outside conventional security controls (aka shadow IT), increasing the risk of data exposure, compliance violations, and financial loss.
Effective SaaS risk management starts with visibility. You can’t protect what you can’t see. IT and security teams must have a complete inventory of all SaaS applications integrated into their environment, whether sanctioned or shadow IT. This inventory should be continuously monitored for changes and new integrations, especially in dynamic hybrid work setups.
Once visibility is established, organizations must implement risk assessment frameworks to evaluate the security posture any SaaS app. SpinOne’s AI-powered risk assessment engine, for example, analyzes third-party apps for data access scopes, reputation, compliance certifications, and behavior patterns to determine potential risk levels. This enables IT teams to make informed decisions about app usage and enforce automated approval workflows.
Equally important is policy enforcement. By defining and enforcing clear policies on which apps are allowed or blocked based on risk profiles, businesses can proactively reduce their threat surface. This includes setting role-based access controls, applying least privilege principles, and enabling alerts for policy violations.
Finally, a strong SaaS risk management strategy includes incident response readiness. SaaS platforms are prime targets for cyberattacks, including ransomware and phishing schemes. SpinOne enhances incident response with automated ransomware protection and rapid recovery capabilities, ensuring minimal data loss and business disruption in the event of an attack.
Incorporating SaaS risk management into your broader cybersecurity strategy ensures that innovation through SaaS does not come at the cost of security. It’s a proactive approach so your organization can have the benefits of SaaS while minimizing risk exposure.
Prevent third-party application risk and threats in cloud SaaS
Organizations looking to prevent data protection and security issues with business-critical data must take control of cloud SaaS applications and browser extensions allowed to integrate into the environment. SpinOne is a SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platform that provides world-class data protection and security for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 cloud SaaS environments.
SpinOne provides visibility, control, and approval workflows for integrating cloud SaaS applications into the environment. In addition, using the SpinOne Risk Assessment module, organizations can proactively monitor and secure their cloud SaaS environments from the risk of malicious applications. SpinOne uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to scan and assess the risk of any integrated third-party application automatically. It can perform in seconds to minutes what would take a SecOps professional hours to do for a single application.
Note the following visibility IT admins get to third-party applications:
- Risk assessment score
- App name
- State
- Type of application
- Users who have installed the application
- When access was last granted.
SpinOne provides a streamlined approval workflow that allows easily approving or declining applications requested by end-users.
Using SpinOne policies, organizations can define explicit applications allowed for installation in the environment. Additionally, once an application is blocked, any attempts to install the application in the environment will be disallowed.
SpinOne’s policy-based approach ensures business-critical data is protected from rogue or untrusted applications that users may fall victim to in a phishing attack. In addition, to bolster the protection offered by the cloud SaaS application risk assessment, SpinOne has industry-leading ransomware protection for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
The proactive ransomware protection provided by SpinOne uses security automation to stop ransomware quickly. It carries out the following actions, proactively combatting ransomware:
- SpinOne continuously scans for the signs of ransomware attacking the environment
- If ransomware is detected, SpinOne forcibly removes the network connection from the ransomware process
- It performs scans of the environment to find affected files
- Any affected files found are automatically recovered from the last good SpinOne backup (configurable)
- It then automatically notifies administrators
This proactive cloud SaaS application security and ransomware protection approach provides the 1-2 punch organizations need to defeat cloud SaaS ransomware attempts. In addition to the assessment and monitoring of cloud SaaS applications and ransomware protection, SpinOne gives IT admins and SecOps professionals visibility to user activities in the cloud SaaS environment. The SpinOne Cloud Monitor > Activity Log dashboard shows cloud SaaS activities and SpinOne-specific logging in a single-pane-of-glass view.
If you want to learn more about the robust cybersecurity and data protection features offered by SpinOne and sign up for a demo call, click here.
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