SaaS Security: Understanding Modern Threats and How to Guard Against Them

The rise of cloud-based software applications has changed the way many companies operate. Leveraging SaaS platforms allows organizations to streamline their workflows and better accommodate remote and hybrid workforces. However, spreading your data throughout the cloud can leave it vulnerable — unless you have strong SaaS security practices in place.

In order to implement those measures, you must fully understand the modern cloud landscape and the many threats to data security, both unintentional and malicious. This guide will help you better understand what you’re up against and the best practices for implementing SaaS security solutions.

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The dangers of data exfiltration

Data breaches can be extremely costly — think millions of dollars per incident. And that monetary deficit doesn’t even account for the loss of trust from customers and clients, which can affect your bottom line for years to come and even expose your company to further costly lawsuits. Preventing data exfiltration must be a top priority for any company using cloud apps and storage.

Threat actors might want access to intellectual property and other proprietary data; they could be looking for customer data like names, addresses, and social security numbers; or they could be searching for login credentials to make their way further into your systems. Once the data is in their hands, cyber criminals can use it to extort your organization — or simply auction that information off on the black market.

Not all data exfiltration arises from external sources; it could come from your own employees, whether accidentally or with malicious intent. Similarly, there’s no single strategy or method that allows threat actors to gain access to your data. They might use phishing attempts, which are one of the most successful methods of data exfiltration, or social engineering via email attachments; they might also take advantage of a careless employee’s access and break through easy-to-guess passwords or take hold of misplaced devices. That’s why it’s so important to implement numerous SaaS security best practices and be proactive about data exfiltration prevention.

To learn more about the most common methods of data exfiltration, check out our  Understanding Data Exfiltration Prevention blog.

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Preventing data exfiltration with SaaS security best practices

Know your SaaS apps

How many SaaS solutions does your company use? If you don’t know the answer, it’s time for an inventory. The more you rely on cloud solutions, the easier it is to lose track of what data is stored where, especially when you take shadow IT into consideration. That’s why your first step toward SaaS security should be evaluating all of the cloud apps in use across your organization — including those installed on remote devices.

Start by conducting a thorough SaaS inventory and monitoring data usage across those apps. If your employees are using programs that haven’t been approved by your IT team, you’ll need to evaluate how to include them in your security planning — or take measures to prevent their use. If you’re not sure where to begin, prioritize the most important apps for business continuity. These would typically cause the most disruption if breached.

Use single sign-on and multi-factor authentication

Once you’ve inventoried your SaaS apps, the next step is to unify them under a single set of credentials. This is known as single sign-on (SSO), and it eliminates the hassle of managing unique logins for every app you use. The more usernames and passwords you have, the greater the risk, and sharing or writing down those passwords opens up new attack vectors to exploit.

You can further strengthen SaaS security by requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA requires users to provide multiple forms of identification to gain access to apps, limiting the risks of using SSO to unify cloud systems. By using SSO and MFA together, you’re making it significantly more difficult for unauthorized users to access your data.

This is important because one of the most common ways threat actors gain access to unauthorized data is via account takeover (ATO). They may attempt to gain this information directly from employees via phishing, illegally obtain usernames and passwords and use them in credential stuffing, or try more overt social engineering methods like manipulation or coercion. While you can’t control the actions of these data thieves, you can make employee training a key part of your data security strategy. This way, workers will understand how to identify suspicious phishing attempts and other common vectors of attack.

Get more SaaS security tips in SaaS Security Best Practices for Modern Organizations and Account Takeover Protection: What It Is and How It Combats ATO Fraud.

Implement a zero-trust strategy for remote access

In the age of remote work, one of the biggest threats to modern organizations is keeping track of the vast number of users and devices located outside the traditional corporate network. For decades, virtual private networks (VPNs) were the go-to solution for connecting remote users to company resources. But VPNs can’t give you the visibility into user behavior or unmanaged devices you need to protect your resources. 

Instead, to secure remote access to resources in the cloud, organizations must embrace a zero-trust solution like zero trust network access (ZTNA), which can enforce granular access controls without sacrificing performance and user experience.

Want to know more about how ZTNA works? Read the full article: ZTNA Use Cases: Real-World Examples for Modern Enterprises. 

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Get to know CASB

Why do you need a cloud access security broker (CASB)? Simple — the right CASB consolidates multiple security policies and consistently applies them throughout your cloud apps. This protects onsite computers as well as remote laptops and smartphones from unauthorized access to your SaaS apps and beyond.

At a minimum, your CASB should offer robust data protection, as well as active threat detection and prevention. It’s also important to keep compliance in mind; the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recommends “policy controls and remediation workflows that enforce regulatory compliance in real time for every industry, from GDPR and SOX to PCI and HIPAA.” Finally, make sure your chosen CASB integrates seamlessly with your existing systems — that means not only SaaS apps but also communication platforms, CRMs, email, and more.

Here are a few use cases that show how CASB works:

• Maintaining visibility: As mentioned above, employees using unapproved cloud apps could create major security threats. A CASB can generate reports that identify all of the apps and services used across your network and alert you when new ones are installed, allowing you to minimize shadow IT.
• Guarding cloud data: In addition to SaaS apps, you’re likely using the cloud to store numerous files. That could mean business-critical documents on Google Drive as well as shared drafts and images on Slack. Your CASB should scan all files as they’re uploaded, identify whether they contain sensitive information, and apply the appropriate protections.
• Protecting against malware: With malware attacks on the rise year over year, you need a CASB that can detect and neutralize them. When scanning stored and newly uploaded files, your CASB should quarantine anything suspicious and notify your IT team.

Learn more about CASBs in CASB Requirements: What You Need to Know to Secure Your Cloud and 7 CASB Use Cases to Protect Cloud-Based Resources.

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Leverage AI and machine learning

Your IT department might be the best in the world, but it can’t fight every threat and fix every vulnerability on its own. With so much data flowing to and from a vast landscape of apps and cloud servers, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help protect your data in numerous ways.

CASBs and other security measures typically leverage AI and ML to automatically detect threats, but that’s just the start. For instance, as datasets grow in size, they become more difficult to parse, and comprehensive manual monitoring becomes virtually impossible. On the other hand, AI is incredibly effective at drawing insights from large quantities of data. From there, it can perform predictive analyses about potential threats to your organization’s cloud data.

Another function of AI and ML in the SaaS security landscape is enhancing encryption. The act of encrypting data is nothing new — in fact, it’s been done for millennia — but modern technology can leverage significant computational power to create stronger encryption algorithms than ever before.

It’s also worth noting that AI and ML can address concerns about remote user behavior with user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA). By implementing UEBA, your IT team can spot potential user-created issues the moment they occur without unnecessarily impeding employees.

Want to know more? Read the full article: The Impact of AI and Machine Learning on Cloud Data Protection.

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Ask the right questions to find your SaaS security solution

Just as there’s no single way malicious actors can gain access to your cloud data, there’s also no one-size-fits-all solution that works for every company and every industry. It’s clear that CASBs are integral to comprehensive data security, but finding the right one requires knowing what to ask. Download the e-book Safeguarding Cloud Data with CASB: 4 Key Questions to Consider to find out how CASBs secure data across multi-cloud environments — and how to find the option that works best for you.