Best Practices For Comprehensive SaaS Security

Are you taking the right steps to secure your SaaS applications?

According to Forrester's 2019 Global Business Technographics Security Survey, 57% of global leaders have planned to invest in SaaS as a part of their digital transformation strategy. This change is driven by the low upfront costs and ease of usage associated with SaaS and is further accelerated by the remote work situation organizations are experiencing now.

Shyam Kumar, a senior leader in enterprise cloud security shares his best practices for organizations to follow as they embrace digital transformation in an article on Forbes.

They are as follows -

• Have a solid strategy for securing your data in SaaS apps.

• Validate your SaaS vendor's security and compliance certifications and data access policies. Basic security standards such as ISO 27001 and SOC-2 are a must.

• Monitor the users with an identity management tool to prevent rogue users from breaching the system.

• Keep an eye on the behaviors of users who have access to SaaS apps that have critical data.

• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for increased security against compromised credentials.

• Control SaaS access from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and devices don't authorize to prevent data misuse.

• Make sure that data imports and integrations happen in a safe and secure environment.

• Encrypt and classify the data stored in a SaaS database.

• Train your employees about cybersecurity and the risks of security breaches.

What We Think

The way we work has changed in the last 18 months. More and more people seamlessly switch between personal and office devices for work, resulting in more business-critical data outside the company's network. The best practices suggested in the article cannot be put to practice with the traditional approach/tools. This reality requires a new set of tools to secure companies without impacting the workforce. Automated toolsets like SaaS Management Platforms(SMP's) and CASB's will help discover the risks both in approved applications and Shadow IT, leading the way in securing organizations in the post-Covid world.

You can read the full article here.