What is SSPM? An Overview of SaaS Security Posture Management

February 21, 2023

What is SSPM An Overview SaaS Security Posture Management

Today, businesses depend on numerous software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to manage their workload, data, and procedures. With all the benefits it offers, SaaS also presents its own unique set of security risks.

To ensure that your business is proactive in dealing with these potential threats, you need a SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) system.

In this article, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about SSPM and how it can protect your business.

What is SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)?

SSPM is all about keeping your organization’s SaaS applications secure using technology and automation tools. It’s a process that involves continuously monitoring your SaaS environment to identify and address potential security vulnerabilities.

Think of it like this:

You have a security guard for your cloud-based applications, such as Office 365 and Salesforce, for instance. A SaaS security posture management tool will provide you with a central point of control. It will help you manage access controls, permissions, and configurations to prevent data breaches, unauthorized access, and other security threats.

sspm quote

Essentially, it’s all about keeping a close eye on the security posture of the SaaS applications that your organization uses, which enables you to:

  • control user access
  • ensure compliance with industry regulations
  • identify vulnerabilities and threats against external and internal cyberattacks
  • take proactive steps to fix security risks

The Importance of SSPM in Your Business

For any organization that uses SaaS apps, SSPM is crucial to have.

Cloud-based applications are convenient and can be a great asset for boosting efficacy and output, but they also have their own set of potential security issues. If you have sensitive business data and user information stored in them, you will want a robust SaaS security system.

SaaS security poses challenges due to third-party management, leading to potential security gaps and vulnerabilities exploitable by cybercriminals.

That’s why it’s important to have SSPM.

With an SSPM solution, you can monitor for threats that may harm your business. Plus, if a user makes any errors in the settings, you can use the platform to fix them and ensure that everything still meets SaaS security standards.

Basically, it is a shared responsibility. SSPM enables collaboration between you and your SaaS vendor to ensure security. Your part is to make sure nothing goes wrong while they do their part by providing the platform and SSPM tools to protect your data.

Startechup SaaS application development services

The 5 Key Benefits of SSPM for Your Business

1. Improved SaaS Security Posture

Managing your security posture can be tricky when every SaaS application has its own unique configurations and settings. It gets even more complicated by the numerous external and internal threats that can come your way.

SSPM helps you to get a clear view of your actual security posture for your entire SaaS stack, making it easier to protect your business against cyber-attacks and data breaches. It continuously monitors configurations, connections to SaaS apps, user security practices, and devices in use to reduce the risk of security breaches and identify potential threats.

2. Compliance Management

Compliance with internal regulations and external security policies can be a major challenge for companies heavily using SaaS, which is why having SSPM can be helpful.

SSPM will alert your security teams in the event that any compliance challenges arise and can even automatically execute corrective measures. This assures that your business operates in compliance with the necessary frameworks and regulations.

Additionally, SaaS security is critical for organizations to comply with various regulations and standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, and PCI DSS.

3. Prevent Misconfigurations

In France, a massive data breach involving nearly 500,000 people happened in French hospitals that leaked their names, social security numbers, and medical information, among others. This shows the importance of security data.

SSPM can catch issues early and prevent them from becoming major problems. These tools continuously ensure secure configurations of SaaS applications by monitoring your SaaS environments.

Unlike other security solutions focusing only on intentional misconfigurations, SSPM is also designed to catch unintentional misconfigurations. This gives you greater control over your SaaS environment and reduces the risk of security incidents caused by user error.

4. Effectively Control Permission Settings

Arranging access management on your SaaS applications is crucial for maintaining a strong SaaS security posture. With SSPM, you can rest assured that your SaaS security settings are configured correctly and that your team only has access to the data and applications they need.

SSPM automatically reviews user permissions, alerting you to overly permissive roles. This ensures that only authorized personnel access sensitive data, systems, devices, and assets.

With this control, you can prevent unauthorized access to your SaaS applications and maintain a robust overall security posture. This can help you to avoid costly data breaches and other security incidents.

5. Smooth Transition to Another SaaS Solution

As your business expands, transitioning from one SaaS solution to another may be necessary. Such changes can reduce efficiency in your organization’s internal structure.

However, with SSPM solutions, you can manage these changes more effectively.

SSPM helps in continuous monitoring within your SaaS environments, making it easier for your entire organization to manage platform migrations and updates. This streamlines training for your users, employees, and customers, helping to reduce the risk of misconfigurations and vulnerabilities that can lead to security incidents.

working with a laptop

The Features and Capabilities of SSPM

If you want to know if SaaS security posture management is the right solution for your organization, let’s take a look at its features and capabilities:

1. Around-the-Clock Monitoring

Your SSPM solution should monitor your SaaS applications 24/7 to ensure they are configured securely. It implements privacy and security rules automatically, making security management easier for your security team.

2. Integrated Security Benchmarks

SSPM solutions are programmed to run security checks according to industry benchmarks and standards. It tailors to your SaaS security by doing compliance checks, giving you greater control over your data and applications.

3. Remediation

SSPM can help remediate security risks automatically or with support from the SSPM vendor. Active remediation in SSPM solutions can improve your ability to respond quickly to security threats. As such, they can help to minimize the damage of security incidents.

4. Compatibility for Different Applications

SSPM systems are compatible with a wide range of applications. They can be easily integrated with other SaaS tools that an organization may already be using, such as video conferencing platforms, messaging applications, HR management systems, and more.

5. Navigational Dashboard

An SSPM solution can consolidate and display all security risks across multiple applications on a single dashboard. This allows all stakeholders, including application users, IT, and security staff, to easily understand security risks and take actionable steps to remediate them.

Comparing SSPM with Other Cloud Solutions

While SSPM is a popular SaaS security solution, other options might better meet your security needs. Some can complement SSPM, creating a more comprehensive cybersecurity environment for your business.

Here’s a brief comparative analysis of SSPM with other solutions:

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

CASB provides a central point of control for security policies and monitoring for cloud services, while SSPM monitors and manages the performance of security software.

Both technologies can be used together to provide a comprehensive security solution for an organization’s use of cloud services. Cloud access security brokers secure the organization’s data and users in the cloud, while SSPM ensures that the security software used to protect that data is working properly.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

CSPM and SSPM are both cloud security solutions, but they differ in their focus. The former is more concerned with securing the cloud infrastructure itself, while the latter focuses on securing the applications and data within the cloud.

CSPM provides visibility, governance, and enforcement of an organization’s cloud infrastructure, while SSPM offers visibility and security controls for SaaS applications. Both solutions monitor for security risks, such as misconfigurations and compliance violations, but CSPM also includes infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings.

video call interview

3 SaaS Security Best Practices

Training your security team is only one of the many steps you can take if you want to cultivate a positive security culture within your organization.

As such, here are the initiatives you want to take:

1. Implement a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) System

An effective way to mitigate data leaks is to have a DLP system in place. It can block unauthorized transfers, download and upload sensitive data to personal devices, and manipulate data. You can use SSPM to streamline your DLP efforts to fill in the data security gaps in your SaaS applications.

2. Encrypt Sensitive Data

Encrypting is part of data protection practices that you want to establish in your business operations. Remember that your data is always at risk as long as it’s moving to different environments. Even when providers offer basic encryptions to protect data, it’s never a bad idea to have your own.

3. Asses Your SaaS Providers

With your IT and security teams, never forget to conduct thorough research about potential SaaS providers. Upon choosing your providers, take time to assess their systems, compliance, certificates, and other security assets. It will determine the relationship and the success of your SSPM solutions.

developers coding at work

Get Your SaaS Development from StarTechUP!

A security risk will loom over your business if you don’t address it early. Choose a trustworthy SaaS provider from the start.

We at StarTechUP put security in the top spot when creating custom software for our clients. Our team is trained to ensure that your outsourced software projects are equipped with security features before we launch them. We’ve worked with industries that need to maintain a security status for their stakeholders, such as healthcare, tourism, and events, among others.

If you want to develop secure custom software for your business, contact us today!

About the author: Andrea Jacinto - Content Writer

A content writer with a strong SEO background, Andrea has been working with digital marketers from different fields to create optimized articles which are informative, digestible, and fun to read. Now, she's writing for StarTechUP to deliver the latest developments in tech to readers around the world. View on Linkedin

MORE INSIGHTS