The definitive guide to SaaS security posture management

As business technology and data rampantly move to third-party SaaS services, protecting and hardening these environments is quickly becoming a top priority for IT security teams. However, organizations often use hundreds of apps, each with its own special blend of security settings, access controls, and third-party integrations, making it an untenable problem at scale.

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Organizations often turn to new SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solutions to help centralize and automate the detection, remediation, and reporting of configuration issues, identity risks, and other threats. Yet the SSPM market is still emerging, and it can be difficult to figure out what capabilities to prioritize in an SSPM solution and how different vendors stack up.

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What is SaaS security posture management?

When most people talk about SaaS security posture management, the first thing that usually comes to mind is checking the configuration of business-critical apps. After all, each app has its own unique set of security settings and access controls to learn and keep track of, and they update more frequently than legacy IT.

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Yet, maintaining the security and risk posture of an organization's entire SaaS estate extends well beyond managing configuration drift for a handful of services. Organizations must also account for SaaS identity risks, third-party risks, integration and data access risks, and more.

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Key features of an effective SSPM solution

As you evaluate SSPM vendors, consider the following critical capabilities and evaluate how each provider will help you manage and secure your entire SaaS attack surface.

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SaaS discovery and inventory

• Discover and inventory your apps, accounts, users, groups, and instances, including unauthorized SaaS and apps managed outside of security or IT

SaaS risk management

• Detect data breaches affecting apps your employees are using
• Identify supply chain risks that could affect your software pipeline or provide access to sensitive data

SaaS compliance management

• Discover and monitor all SaaS apps in scope of compliance and any associated accounts
• Perform regular user access reviews for in-scope apps
• Monitor and enforce critical configurations such as MFA adoption, SSO enrollment, and group access settings

Identity risk management

• Inventory SaaS accounts associated with employees, interns, contractors, and groups
• Identify over-provisioned users and unused accounts
• Offboard departing employees completely to avoid orphaned data and lingering access

Integration risk management

• Assess the level of access third-party apps have to your organization
• Identify third-party apps with unnecessary or excessive access
• Intervene automatically to revoke risky or unnecessary access

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SSPM vs. CSPM

While SSPM focuses on the security posture of SaaS applications, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is concerned with the security of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments like AS, Azure and GCP. CSPM tools monitor cloud infrastructure configurations, while SSPM tools are specialized for SaaS application security. Both are essential for a comprehensive cloud security strategy, as they address different layers of the cloud stack.

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Common SaaS security challenges

Any organization that uses SaaS apps in their critical operations, particularly in heavily-regulated industries, should be concerned about SaaS security posture management for their entire SaaS footprint. But several common SaaS security challenges can leave organizations vulnerable.

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Your SaaS attack surface is larger than you think.

Most organizations drastically underestimate the scope of their SaaS estate and the impact of SaaS sprawl on their SaaS security posture—and you can’t secure apps you don’t know about. Across Nudge Security customer environments alone, we’ve discovered over 40,000 unique applications in use by employees.

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SaaS supply chain breaches are on the rise.

Organizations face an average of six breaches in their SaaS supply chain every year, according to Nudge Security data. In fact, by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains, a three-fold increase from 2021, according to Gartner, Inc.

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Emerging technology like GenAI introduces new challenges.

Looking at a new and rapidly growing space can provide another indicator of how quickly employees adopt new technologies: Between 2023 and 2024, the number of AI tools we observed in customer environments grew by 900% to a total of 770 apps.

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Weak SaaS security can have legal and regulatory repercussions.

As the pace of modern work continues to drive SaaS adoption, organizations are storing more and more data within SaaS apps, and regulators are paying attention. Data stored in SaaS apps may fall under data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, security standards such as ISO 27001 and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and industry-specific compliance requirements like HIPAA and PCI DSS. Plus, contractual promises to customers, partners, or vendors regarding data handling and security would also extend to data stored within SaaS apps.

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Best practices for implementing SaaS security posture management

Conduct a thorough risk assessment.

Before implementing an SSPM solution, organizations should conduct a comprehensive risk assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities and areas of concern. This involves understanding the security posture of all SaaS applications in use, evaluating the sensitivity of the data they handle, and assessing the potential impact of a security breach.

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Establish clear policies and procedures.

Organizations should establish clear security policies and procedures for the use of SaaS applications. This includes guidelines for data access, sharing, and storage, as well as protocols for responding to security incidents. These policies should be enforced consistently across all applications. With Nudge Security, for example, you can automatically deliver your acceptable use policy to every employee who signs up for a new AI tool, helping them make informed choices with context on the potential risks of AI technology.

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Continuous training and awareness

Employee awareness is a critical component of effective SSPM. Organizations should provide continuous training on SaaS security best practices, including recognizing phishing attempts, securing sensitive data, and adhering to company policies. At Nudge Security, we believe that every employee has the potential to behave in ways that support and strengthen an organization’s cybersecurity posture—it's just not always simple or straightforward to do so. We believe that just-in-time security guidance, delivered to the right SaaS users at the right time, is the only scalable approach to SaaS security and governance.

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Regular audits and assessments

Regular audits and security assessments are essential for maintaining a strong SaaS security posture. Organizations should periodically review their SaaS configurations, access controls, and compliance status. With Nudge Security, you can start this process with an accurate SaaS inventory, and easily automate user access reviews and user lifecycle management tasks like onboarding, access requests, offboarding, and more.

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SaaS security posture management with Nudge Security

Nudge Security delivers SSPM functionality as part of a complete SaaS security and governance solution that spans SaaS discovery, SSPM, third-party risk, spend management, identity governance, and more.

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Automated workflows and purpose-built playbooks make scalable SaaS security and governance a reality by orchestrating and distributing admin work to the business units and individuals who manage SaaS apps day to day.

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Nudge Security uses modern principles of behavioral psychology to work with employees—not against them—guiding them toward safe, compliant SaaS use without disrupting the pace of productivity.

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Here's how Nudge Security strengthens your security posture at every stage of the SaaS adoption lifecycle.

• Detection: Inventory SaaS security posture and detect SaaS risks.
• Assessment: Evaluate the severity of SaaS risks.
• Prioritization: Prioritize risks based on their potential impact.
• Mitigation: Reduce SaaS risks with targeted interventions.
• Monitoring & alerting: Detect changes and anomalies.
• Reporting & Documentation: Document progress and generate reports for compliance audits.
• Refinement & recommendation: Support ongoing reviews and improvements.

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Learn more about how Nudge Security compares to a traditional SSPM.

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