As we transition into the new year, it's a perfect time to reflect on the milestones and feats we at Nudge Security have achieved in 2023. Let's recap:

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Big moments we celebrated in 2023

We rang in the new year with the news that Nudge Security was named among the top "Cybersecurity startups to watch in 2023" by CSO Online. After that, we won a Product Award from Products That Count, and were named an SC Awards Most Promising Early-stage Startup finalist.

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Earning non-sponsored industry accolades feels great—but you know what’s even better? Earning the patent for your novel technology: an approach for discovering and managing SaaS use across highly distributed environments without reliance on network or endpoint monitoring technologies. With this unrivaled SaaS discovery method, we’ve discovered nearly 32,000 unique SaaS applications used in our customers’ environments…and counting.

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Speaking of customers, we celebrated in droves this year as we onboarded new customers of all sizes and industries. Customers and industry experts have been sharing their love for Nudge Security, which of course we all read every night before we go to sleep.

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But really: Our customers inspire and motivate us to continuously solve real problems for real people. We released 43 new features to our changelog this year, including our most recent release: an employee-facing app directory to help streamline access requests. It’s worth noting that this year’s near-weekly release cadence doesn’t fully account for all of the bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements our engineers tirelessly roll out on a regular basis.

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Big challenges we tackled in 2023

2023 was (obviously) the year of GenAI.

Looking back a year ago, few had predicted the explosive rise of GenAI this year. Almost overnight, it seemed like every business problem suddenly had a purpose-built GenAI solution, and anyone not learning how to prompt would be rendered obsolete. In July, we reported discovering 75 distinct AI SaaS tools in customer environments. By October, that number had doubled to 150 apps, and it continues to grow.

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The sudden rise in unsanctioned AI SaaS adoption across organizations magnified current SaaS visibility and security challenges and left many IT and security leaders grappling with questions about data risk and privacy.

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We responded with multiple AI-specific features to help IT and security organizations stay ahead of the AI SaaS adoption curve, including an AI usage dashboard, AI supply chain risk insights, and an AI onboarding playbook.

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It was also a year of “Efficient Growth.”

As disruptive as AI was this year, it wasn’t the only challenge IT and security leaders faced. Macroeconomic shifts early in the year doused the “growth at all costs” fire that had raged through pandemic years, giving rise to a year of “efficient growth” that reached into the security organization’s coffers.

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Finding it more challenging than ever to justify new investments in emerging security technologies, our customers seized on Nudge Security’s ability to surface SaaS sprawl as a way to not only shrink the organization’s attack surface, but also eliminate wasted SaaS spending.

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Indeed, finance and procurement teams find considerable value in Nudge Security’s unrivaled visibility of the organization’s SaaS estate. To support cross-functional SaaS rationalization efforts, we made it even easier for organizations to identify and remove unnecessary, duplicative, and abandoned SaaS accounts.

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Identity security and governance gained traction.

Early in the year, SC Magazine planted a flag with “Five ways security teams can more effectively manage identities in the cloud.” The article, which pointed to Nudge Security as one solution, noted that managing and securing identities in the cloud has become a “big mess,” one that continues to be exploited by threat actors.

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That’s why Nudge Security addresses SaaS identity security lifecycle, starting by discovering all SaaS user and group accounts, authentication methods, and even non-human OAuth access granted to third-party applications. From there, we’ve delivered capabilities to support:

• Automating access requests with an employee-facing app directory
• Onboarding SaaS apps and accounts to your SSO provider
• Streamlining regular SaaS access reviews for compliance
• Removing access to abandoned accounts and unnecessary OAuth grants
• Offboarding employees’ cloud and SaaS access

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A big year ahead in 2024

Recently, our CEO Russ Spitler shared his “Predictions For SaaS Security In 2024: Trends To Watch” in Forbes magazine. We’ve got ambitious plans to stay ahead of these predictions, keeping our customers one step ahead on AI supply chain risk, identity governance, SaaS sprawl, and more. Keep an eye out for upcoming announcements as we move into the new year—and don’t be shy about booking a demo or starting a free trial if you’re curious about how we can help your enterprise.

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Finally, we start this year with a big thanks to all of our customers, partners, advisors, investors, and friends who made this year possible for Nudge Security. It was another whirlwind, but we couldn’t be more proud of the work we’ve done and the partnerships we’ve forged. Wishing you all a very happy 2024!