One simple factor is behind today’s explosion of SaaS adoption: productivity. We’ve reached an era where there are purpose-built tools for almost every aspect of modern business, and it’s incredibly easy (and tempting) for your employees to adopt these tools without going through a formal IT approval and procurement process.
But this trend has also increased the attack surface, and with it security and governance issues that are still seen as 100% the responsibility of IT and security departments. IT security leaders need scalable solutions Discovering SaaS and managing this ever-expanding attack surface.
At the same time, their financial peers are looking to cut technology costs (rather than salaries or headcount) – particularly as a result of the underutilization or over-deployment of SaaS licenses, which Gartner estimates approx. 25% of all SaaS subscriptions.
But the key question is, where can you reduce the SaaS attack surface (and costs) without affecting performance? This is the essence of efficiency SaaS managementand where Nudge Security is an indispensable tool.
Find out what your workforce is really using today
As the old saying goes, you can’t protect what you can’t see, so the first step is to manage SaaS security is to get a complete inventory of what technologies are actually being used and by whom.
Nudge Security detects and classifies every SaaS application ever introduced by anyone in an organization within minutes of starting a free trial. For each app detected, you’ll see who was the first user, a list of all users, authentication methods, and more, so you can easily (and quickly) understand how entrenched a particular app is and whether security best practices like MFA and SSO are in place.
Evaluate the overlap between similar, redundant tools
It’s one thing to know that your organization uses three different project management packages, but before you can reduce SaaS proliferation when cutting applications or licenses, you need to understand who is using which platform and for what purpose.
Nudge Security makes it easy. For each application used in your organization, you can see a Venn diagram that shows the overlap of users in similar applications, and you can click on the diagram to see a list of overlapping users in each combination of applications. The bigger the circle, the more accounts there are for that app. With this information, you can better understand which tools are actively used and likely to be important for productivity, and which may be candidates for phasing out.
Also, with Nudge Security you can send prompts to users via Slack or email (called “nudges” of course) to ask if they’re still using a certain app to figure out which accounts are really needed without spreading the heap electronic spreadsheets.
Evaluate and compare vendor security profiles
In addition to the popularity of the application among your workforce, the relative security of SaaS providers should be an important factor in determining where you can reduce your SaaS estate. Nudge Security can also help here by providing a vendor security profile for each SaaS vendor used in your organization, as well as others you may want to explore. This information makes it faster and easier to complete supplier risk assessments.
The vendor profile shows details about the vendor’s security program, MFA methods, SSO availability, breach history, and more so you can compare similar vendors and ensure your organization is choosing vendors that meet your security and compliance requirements.
Compare SaaS cost data
Nudge security also makes it easy to add cost data for each program so you can get an idea of the relative cost of similar options and look for opportunities reduce SaaS costs. While financial or procurement systems may have SaaS spend data, they lack the context of usage and security. Nudge Security brings together usage, cost, and security data in one place so you can more easily evaluate and prioritize consolidation opportunities.
Continually restrain the growth of SaaS
Just like cleaning out a closet, it can be difficult to keep your SaaS property organized. With Nudge Security, you can publish a directory of approved apps to your employees so they can easily find and request access to the tools they need.
In addition, you can trigger alerts to notify you of new programs and automatically request detailed information from the user to understand why the program is needed and how it will be used. When new apps are released, you can also prompt users to suggest a similar, approved app or provide a rationale for why they should use another app.
A scalable approach to managing SaaS
In many organizations, the approach to SaaS management disconnected, with finance responding to one set of data, IT security to another, and everyone’s guess as to what is actually being used the most. With Nudge Security, you can ensure that risk, cost and performance are part of the equation when evaluating and planning for technology consolidation.
Start your 14-day trial today at www.nudgesecurity.com/getting-started
