SaaS applications contain a lot of sensitive data and are central to business operations. Despite this, too many organizations rely on half measures and hope that their SaaS suite will remain secure. Unfortunately, this approach is lacking, and security teams will be blind to threat prevention and detection, and open to regulatory breaches, data breaches, and significant breaches.
If you understand the importance of SaaS security and need help explaining it internally to motivate your team, this article is for you—and covers:
- Why SaaS data should be protected
- Real examples of attacks on SaaS programs
- The attack surface of SaaS applications
- Other types of less appropriate solutions include CASB or manual auditing
- ROI SSPM
- What to look for in the right SSPM
What’s in your SaaS data?
Almost all business operations are done through SaaS. So are HR, sales, marketing, product development, legal and finance. In essence, SaaS applications are central to almost every business function, and the data that supports and drives these functions is stored in these cloud applications.
This includes confidential customer data, employee records, intellectual property, budget plans, legal contracts, profit and loss statements—the list is endless.
It’s true that SaaS applications are built to be secure, but a shared responsibility model that ensures SaaS providers include the controls necessary to keep the application secure leaves their customers with the ultimate responsibility and control for hardening the environment and making sure that they properly configured. Applications typically have hundreds of settings and thousands of user permissions, and when administrators and security services don’t fully understand the implications of application-specific settings, this leads to risky security gaps.
SaaS applications are under attack
Headlines have shown that SaaS applications are attracting the attention of threat actors. Attack on Snowflake resulted in one company exposing more than 500 million customer records. Phishing campaign in Azure cloud compromised the accounts of several top executives. A major telecommunications service provider was hacked, exposing files containing sensitive information about more than 63,000 employees.
The threats are real and growing. Cybercriminals regularly use brute force and password spraying attacks, gaining access to applications that can resist these types of attacks, using SSPM to strengthen access control and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) capabilities to detect these threats.
A single breach by threat actors can have significant financial and operational consequences. Introducing SSPM prevents multiple threats from occurring due to rigid configurations and ensures uninterrupted operations. Combined with ITDR’s SaaS-centric solution, it provides complete 360-degree protection.
You can read more about each violation in this blog series.
What is the SaaS attack surface?
The attack surface includes a number of areas that threat actors use to gain unauthorized access to a company’s SaaS applications.
Incorrect configurations
Misconfigured settings can allow unknown users to access programs, steal data, create new users, and interfere with business operations.
Identity-First Security
Weak or compromised credentials can expose SaaS applications to attacks. These include no MFA enabled, weak password requirements, broad user rights, and permissive guest settings. Such poor rights management, especially in complex applications such as Salesforce and Workday, can lead to unnecessary access that can be exploited in the event of an account disclosure.
The identity attack surface extends from human accounts to non-human identities (NHIs). NHIs are often widely licensed and often unmonitored. Threat actors who can take control of these individuals often have full access within the application. NHIs include shadow apps, OAuth integration, service accounts and API keys, and more.
Additionally, there are other attack surfaces in identity protection:
- Identification devices: High-privileged users and devices with poor hygiene levels can expose data through malware on their devices
- Data security: Resources shared over public links are at risk of being leaked. This includes documents, repositories, strategic presentations and other shared files.
GenAI
When threat actors gain access to a GenAI-enabled program, they can use this tool to quickly find a treasure trove of sensitive data related to a company’s IP, strategic vision, sales data, sensitive customer information, employee data, and more. d.
Can SaaS applications be secured with CASB or manual audits?
The answer is negative. Manual audits are not enough here. Change is happening too fast and too much is on the line to rely on an audit that is done periodically.
CASBs, once considered the ideal SaaS security tool, are also falling short. They require extensive customization and cannot cover the various attack surfaces of SaaS applications. They create security blindness by focusing on paths and ignoring user behavior within the application itself.
SSPM is a single solution that understands the complexities of configurations and relationships between users, devices, data, permissions, and applications. This depth of coverage is exactly what is needed to keep sensitive information out of the hands.
In the recent Cloud Security Alliance Annual Survey SaaS Security Survey: 2025 CISO Plans & Priorities, 80% of respondents indicated that SaaS security was a priority. 56 percent have increased their SaaS security staff, and 70 percent have a dedicated SaaS security team or role. These statistics represent a major leap in SaaS security development and CISO priorities.
What is the return on investment (ROI) with an SSPM solution?
Determining the ROI of your SaaS application is something you can calculate.
Earlier this year, the company Forrester Research prepared such a report on the return on investment. They looked at the costs, savings and processes of a $10 billion global media information company and found that they achieved a 201% ROI, with a net present value of $1.46 million and a payback in less than 6 months.
You can also begin to calculate the value of improving SaaS security by determining the actual number of breaches that have occurred and the cost of those breaches (not to mention the immeasurable measure of reputational damage). Add to that the cost of manually monitoring and securing SaaS applications, and the time it takes to find a configuration drift and fix it without a solution. Subtract the total benefits of the SSPM solution to determine the annual net benefit of SSPM.
Calculating the return on investment makes it easier for those in control of the budget to allocate funds to SSPM.
Request a demo to learn what SSPM is all about
Choosing the right SSPM platform
While all SSPMs are designed to secure SaaS applications, there can be a big difference between the breadth and depth of security they offer. Given that nearly every SaaS application contains some degree of sensitive information, look for an SSPM that:
- covers a wider range of non-standard integrations and also supports its own homegrown programs. Make sure it even monitors your social media accounts.
- has the ability to monitor users and their devices
- provides visibility to connected applications
- is able to detect shady apps with GenAI app protection capabilities, as the proliferation of GenAI in SaaS apps is a serious security concern.
- includes Integrated Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) to prevent unwanted activity while detecting and responding to threats.
SaaS applications form the backbone of today’s enterprise IT. When trying to justify SSPM prioritization and investment, be sure to emphasize the value of the data it protects, the threats surrounding the applications, and the return on investment.
