How To Fix Breached SaaS Applications Used By Companies (Research)

How To Fix Breached SaaS Applications Used By Companies (Research)

With the fast advent of technology in solving issues and the ease of use provided by the software, in the near future, more applications will be deployed to solve more complex problems.  SaaS security concerns can feel insurmountable. It’s the next big thing, a frontier that’s strong and growing all the time. It is just another threat that security personnel must contend with. Knowing which applications are being used is the key to tackling SaaS security issues.

By taking this simple initial step, security teams may better analyze the urgency and extent of their SaaS security vulnerabilities and the SaaS shadow IT dilemma. It shouldn’t be hard or expensive to get an accurate picture of how much and what kind of SaaS is being used. The free solution offered by Wing. security might give you an idea of the options available to you.

Start with the basics – Get to know your SaaS layer

SaaS security concerns can feel insurmountable. It’s the next big thing, a frontier that’s strong and growing all the time. It is just another threat that security personnel must contend with. Knowing which applications are being used is the key to tackling SaaS security issues.

ALSO, READ Best Free Cybersecurity Courses Online With Certifications For 2023

By taking this simple initial step, security teams may better analyze the urgency and extent of their SaaS security vulnerabilities and the SaaS shadow IT dilemma. It shouldn’t be hard or expensive to get an accurate picture of how much and what kind of SaaS is being used. The free solution offered by Wing. security might give you an idea of the options available to you.

Determining which SaaS applications are risky

Finding out if an application has been penetrated is the most obvious way to gauge its potential danger. There is little doubt that SaaS applications are in the crosshairs of hackers, as assaults of this type are on the rise. Stay away from the SaaS vendor until they have fully recovered from the incident (which could take some time). However, there are more factors to consider when deciding whether or not a SaaS application is secure. Additional thoughts, below:

ALSO, READ How Organizations Can Secure Clients’ Data From Hackers.

• Compliances – The security and privacy compliances the application’s vendor has, or hasn’t, are a good indication of its safety. Securing a SOC, HIPAA, ISO (the list goes on…) requires long and scrupulous processes in which the company has to adhere to strict regulations and conditions. Knowing a company’s compliances is imperative to understanding its security level.
• Marketplace presence – Checking whether an application is present in well-known and accounted-for marketplaces is also a helpful step when determining its integrity, which can be linked to its security measures. In respected marketplaces, applications need to go through a vetting process, not to mention they receive user reviews which are arguably one of the most important indicators of an application’s legitimacy.

ALSO, READ Top Cyber Security Courses You Can Enroll Online For Free (2022)

While understanding which applications are potentially risky is important, it’s no easy task. And it is also not the first step. According to Wing Security, the companies they reviewed all had a high three-digit number of SaaS applications in use. So the first and basic question security teams should be asking is:

How many SaaS applications are employees using?

Finding out how many and which SaaS applications are used is obviously necessary before concluding about their security. This is fundamental, but not elementary. While it is important and helpful to enforce SSO and use IAM systems, the decentralized, accessible, and often self-service nature of SaaS applications means that employees can start using virtually any SaaS they need by searching for it online, connecting it to their company’s workspace, and immediately beginning to use it without the need to go through the IAM. When you think about how many SaaS apps offer a free utility or a free version of a tool, you’ll see that this is especially true.

ALSO, READ Microsoft Recently Releases Fix for Zero-Day Flaw (July 2022 Edition) Security Patch Rollout

Luckily, the solution to the aforementioned issue is as simple as using the free, self-service SaaS application discovery tool. The following step, after a thorough SaaS usage map has been created, is to identify the potentially dangerous SaaS programs. When potentially harmful apps are identified, the tokens they were granted by the users who connected them to the business must be revoked. Without the right tool, this can be a time-consuming hassle (the free edition of Wing has the option to remove potentially dangerous applications, but there are restrictions that are removed in the paid version).

Ensuring SaaS usage is safe requires asking and answering two more questions:

1. Which permissions were granted to the SaaS applications?#

It probably goes without saying that not all applications introduce risk all the time. It is also worth adding that even if a SaaS application is breached, the risk it may impose relies heavily on the permissions it was granted. Almost all SaaS applications require some degree of permission to access company data to provide the service for which they were designed.

ALSO, READ Hackers Sign Android Malware Apps with Compromised Platform Certificates

Permissions range from read-only to write permissions that allow the SaaS application to act on behalf of the user, such as sending emails in the user’s name. Proper SaaS security posture management means monitoring the permissions granted by users to an application and ensuring it was only given the necessary permissions.

2. What is the data that flows in and between these applications?#

At the end of the day, it’s all about protecting critical company data, whether it’s business information, Pii, or code. Data has many formats, and it flows in many different ways. The unique way in which SaaS is used across all business units and teams and by anyone in the organization poses the risk of data sharing using SaaS applications that are not designed for safe data sharing. It also poses the risk of data being shared between SaaS applications. Nowadays, many SaaS applications are connected, and onboarding one can give access to a subset of many others. It’s a giant mesh of interconnectivity and data sharing.