Adaptive Shield, a CrowdStrike Company, Leads in 2024 Frost Radar SSPM Leadership Report

CrowdStrike is proud to announce that Adaptive Shield is positioned as the leader in the Frost & Sullivan 2024 SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Frost Radar, earning the highest and farthest-right position among all evaluated vendors. Adaptive Shield, which was acquired by CrowdStrike in November 2024, is recognized for its leadership in innovation and growth, with scores of 4.8/5 and 4.5/5, respectively, on the Frost Radar innovation index.

Adaptive Shield’s identity-first approach marked a pivotal shift in SaaS security. It recognized a critical gap: Even well-secured applications could be compromised if user activity isn’t monitored and secured. Threat actors with stolen credentials could bypass these defenses and gain access as legitimate employees. Moreover, non-human identities such as shadow apps needed to be monitored to secure against takeover attacks, malicious apps and data leakage.

The Frost Radar highlights Adaptive Shield’s release of technology enhancements in 2023 and 2024 as part of its SaaS security strategy. These include its expansion to 150+ integrations with SaaS applications, its Integration Builder to monitor additional and homegrown applications, and its shadow IT discovery, GenAI SaaS security, and enhanced automated workflows and playbooks. With its SaaS-centric threat detection and comprehensive SSPM capabilities, it offers holistic security posture management and threat protection across each SaaS ecosystem.

“The comprehensive coverage of the SaaS ecosystem fueled by solid threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities helps customers accurately detect and prioritize critical risks posed to their SaaS environment,” Frost & Sullivan writes in its Frost Radar report.

We are excited to bring Adaptive Shield’s leading SSPM technology into the CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform. At a time when organizations are quickly expanding their cloud environments — and adversaries are targeting them — these capabilities are essential.

Download the full Frost Radar report for insights into the SSPM landscape and key innovations shaping the future of SaaS security.

Redefining Identity and Cloud Security with Adaptive Shield and Falcon Score

The Frost Radar highlights Adaptive Shield’s strides in identity threat detection and response (ITDR) — an important evolution in SaaS security. By unifying user behavior data across multiple SaaS applications, Adaptive Shield can detect sophisticated anomalies that point products might miss. For example, a user logged into Microsoft and Salesforce from two different locations using separate devices may go unnoticed by either application. However, Adaptive Shield identifies this as a red flag by examining the user’s full scope of activity.

Security teams often lack this additional context, and many struggle to create a full picture of their users and identities. On-premises identity tools lack visibility into online SaaS behaviors, while SaaS tools are blind to users’ on-premises behavior. As a result, users who act suspiciously in one area may maintain full access in other areas of an organization. This fragmented view puts businesses at risk, as adversaries can move laterally without raising alarms.

CrowdStrike has bridged this critical gap by integrating Adaptive Shield with CrowdStrike Falcon® Identity Protection. Adaptive Shield monitors SaaS user activity, while Falcon Identity Protection provides insight into on-premises behavior. Together, they deliver unified visibility across cloud, endpoint and identity ecosystems, enabling real-time threat detection and response.

One of the standout features of this integration is Falcon Score, a dynamic risk rating for human and non-human identities. By analyzing baseline behaviors and detecting anomalies, a Falcon Score indicates the likelihood of an identity being compromised. Adaptive Shield now imports these scores directly into its platform, combining them with user and event data to create a 360-degree view of each user.

Drilling down into the user provides additional depth, explaining why users are considered at risk. And this integration goes further — events and details from CrowdStrike Falcon can be used in queries and custom security checks through Adaptive Shield.

This innovative, unified user view empowers security teams through comprehensive threat detection capabilities, streamlined incident response and enhanced compliance management. It also enables consistent policy enforcement across all corporate areas, ultimately making security teams more effective at detecting and isolating user risk.  

Driving the Future of SaaS Security

As SaaS ecosystems grow more complex, Adaptive Shield continues to lead the way with innovations that address emerging challenges. Its cutting-edge capabilities include:

• Detecting shadow applications to eliminate hidden risks
• Monitoring user behavior and associating device hygiene with access entitlements
• Hardening application access while identifying and mitigating threats

With its identity-first approach, Adaptive Shield has redefined the SSPM landscape by emphasizing that even the most secure applications can be vulnerable if user activity isn’t closely monitored.

CrowdStrike’s acquisition of Adaptive Shield represents an important step forward in SaaS security. By combining Adaptive Shield’s innovative solutions with CrowdStrike’s industry-leading technology, we are bringing a powerful end-to-end cloud security suite to the market. Together, we will continue to deliver groundbreaking innovations, ensuring organizations stay ahead of evolving threats while maintaining seamless, comprehensive security.

Additional Resources

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• See it in action — watch a demo.
• Read more in the solution brief.