Best SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Solutions

SaaS security posture management (SSPM) is a continuous process of adapting and improvising your cloud security endeavors to reduce the chances of a malicious attack. The constant monitoring process oversees SaaS app environments to determine the measurable difference between the standard security policy and the actual security posture.

Most organizations utilize SaaS software for their ecosystem, which often makes it difficult for the IT team to keep track of the organization’s security risk profile. Using a SaaS security posture management solution will allow your organization to make use of automated real-time remediation of misconfiguration, will offer you compliance with common standards such as HIPAA and NIST 800-53, and will provide visibility into the plethora of SaaS apps for probable policy violations.

While a CASB (cloud access security broker) is primarily used for risk assessment, e-discovery, and establishing audit trails, an SSPM is primarily used for strengthening security posture. SSPMs aim to manage and assess the security risk and posture of SaaS applications to prevent attacks and configuration errors. In contrast, CASBs focus on security gaps at the core of a SaaS layer and are primarily reactive, concentrating on detection of breaches once they have occurred. In other words, the relation between CASBs and SSPMs is that an SSPM supplements the enforcement capabilities of a CASB.

The following best practices are recommended for securing SaaS environments and assets:

• Network control: Having network control is one of the top best practices. Network control is important for determining who can access specific instances across the network. On a more granular level, this can also include jump servers and network access control lists (NACL).

• Perimeter network control: Perimeter defense is also crucial. Having a firewall can filter out potentially dangerous or unknown traffic that might constitute a threat based on a set of rules about the types of traffic and permitted source/destination addresses on the network. Organizations should also aim to deploy additional levels of perimeter protection, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), which detect suspicious traffic after it has passed through the firewall.

• Scalability & reliability: One of the biggest features of the cloud is the ability to increase capacity of existing hardware or software by adding resources when necessary. Best practice is to ensure that your solution can accommodate horizontal scaling. In addition, you should make sure that your organization has a disaster recovery plan in place for replicating data and services.

• Access management: It is best practice for organizations to provide a unified framework to manage user authentication through business rules that determine appropriate user access. User access can be based on organizational role, the system accessed, the data requirements, and workflow assignments, independently of the device used.

• Governance and incident management: Another best practice is to make sure procedures are in place for investigating any potential security breaches so you can capture, report, and track certain types of incidents.

• VM management: Frequent updates to your VM are necessary to ensure your infrastructure is secure. A SaaS provider helps you manage your VMs, reducing the time between a breach and patching.

• Data protection: Last but not least, the most important practice of all is protecting your data to prevent a breach in the first place. This can be done by using various methods for data encryption both at rest and in transit. A good solution will deploy encryption technology for data at rest, providing you with a high level of security.

Implementing an SSPM solution is beneficial for many reasons. Below are some of its biggest advantages:

• Detects overly permissive settings: SSPM solutions can help you effectively control access rights and which authorized personnel can access certain types of data, systems, devices, and assets in SaaS applications. In addition, SSPM solutions automatically evaluate every user’s permissions and provide alerts on users with overly permissive roles.

• Simplifies compliance management: Since compliance can often be a challenge for organizations, SSPM solutions are helpful in managing the highly dynamic, distributed nature of SaaS applications. SSPM solutions are designed to continuously monitor the compliance posture against both regulatory standards and internal frameworks. For example, if certain encryption standards or data handling practices aren’t adequate, SSPM solutions will alert the administrators, or, even better, can sometimes automatically take corrective action.

• Prevents cloud misconfigurations: One of the main reasons data breaches occur is because of misconfiguration of cloud services. Even when resources are often configured correctly on day one, they can often drift over time and fall out of compliance. Thus, it is best practice to continuously ensure secure configurations, regardless of the users who access them, the data they store, or the changes that are made to an application.

• Continuous monitoring & remediation: SSPM solutions provide deep context about each and every configuration and enable you to easily monitor and set up alerts. This way, vulnerabilities are quickly closed before they are exploited by cyberattacks.

• Smooth integration: A good SSPM solution will be easy to deploy, and should integrate easily with your applications and your organization’s existing cybersecurity infrastructure, to create a comprehensive defense against cyber threats. Additionally, an SSPM solution will allow your security team to add and monitor new SaaS applications without any issues.

Some of the top features included in SSPM solutions include:

• XDR prevention & detection
• Response automation
• Secure workload configurations & permissions
• Secure user access to cloud apps
• Secure app-to-app communications
• Centralized visibility
• Detailed alerts of glitches
• Auditing and monitoring of sensitive configurations and administrative actions
• Data access management
• Multilayered protection for malware, ransomware, and exploits
• Protection against scanning attacks, data exfiltration, and lateral movement