4 More SaaS Security Risks Your Business Should Know About

As businesses continue to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for their daily operations, the importance of understanding and mitigating security risks cannot be overstated. While many organizations are aware of common SaaS security threats such as data breaches and phishing attacks, there are still several lesser-known risks that can compromise the safety and integrity of sensitive information.

Today, we wanted to dive into some more SaaS security risks that your business should be aware of. By familiarizing yourself with these potential threats and implementing strategies to mitigate them, you can better protect your valuable data and ensure the continued success of your organization.

A few months ago, we shared an article outlining 5 SaaS security risks your business should know about. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of risks that our friends and mentors in the IT industry are noticing, and we want to help you by sharing some insight into what you should focus on next.

More SaaS Security Risks: Software Vulnerability and Ineffective Patching Protocols

Your SaaS provider (or your business) will want to remember that though software vulnerability and ineffective patching are “old hat” in terms of assessing more SaaS security risks, they are still essential to your business and network and shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle of responding to newer or more sophisticated threats.

Web applications are the core of your SaaS program, and they are often multi-tenanted (which means many customers are being served by one software and its supporting infrastructure). Because of this, your security testing should also include attacks where one customer accesses the data of another, as well as logic flaws, injection flaws, and access control weaknesses.

Depending on your preferences and provider capabilities, you can also opt for PaaS – Platform as a Service. This allows you to run your applications in a container, which will run your updates and patches for you.

If your provider is self-hosting these applications, they should also be attentive to the release of operating system and library security patches to ensure they get updated.

We talk about this below, but if you are entrusting your network’s continuity and integrity even minutely to a SaaS provider, you’ll want to ensure you feel comfortable asking them questions (and are satisfied with their answers) because these risks are much harder to mitigate if you and your provider aren’t on the same page about the services you need.

Internal Weaknesses: Policies, Practices, Protocols

Cyber hygiene is a lot like tooth hygiene – the day-to-day seems insignificant, but as the weeks and years go by, you may start to notice your system’s health declining. And taking care of a cavity is much easier than undoing years of internal weaknesses in your company’s IT network.

There are several simple measures to continue to utilize: strong passwords and a password manager, two-factor and/or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA), which can include one-time passwords, hardware security keys, etc.

You should also offer regular cyber hygiene training for your staff and leaders – it’s very easy for your employees to get into a routine that is less than secure, and without corrective training and consistent emphasis, these things can easily fall right out of your busy staff’s minds.

Identity Sprawl

Identity sprawl is the term we apply when users and companies have multiple accounts and identities spread out across multiple systems that are also not synchronous. These accounts are often incompatible with each other and can cause a lot of logistical problems, and that’s without the addition of human error, mismanagement, negligence, cyberattacks, breaches, and other data loss events.

Lack of Transparency

Some SaaS providers have a habit of making big promises, but not sharing the hows and whys. If your provider can’t walk you through their strategies, the chances are good that you will end up with gaps in your data protection and storage. That’s why partnering with a people-first provider like Verve IT can help bridge communication (and cybersecurity) gaps.

There is a balance SaaS providers must maintain between sharing information with clients like you and keeping things on a need-to-know basis to ensure the security of your data locations and access details.

A great barometer for testing transparency with a potential SaaS provider is to see how many of your questions they are willing to answer. If you are talking to the IT provider you’d like to partner with, and you don’t feel like they are giving you the information you need in order to trust their abilities and allow them to effectively assist you in the management of your IT services, the relationship will likely not be a productive one. And with more SaaS security risks to juggle than ever before, that could cost you a lot more than service fees, it could cost you the integrity of your business’s IT system.

Check out Verve’s managed IT services, or give us a call today to discuss your IT and cybersecurity needs.