Intro to SaaS security posture management (SSPM)
Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are a cornerstone of modern business. SaaS apps like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Dropbox dramatically increase productivity, drive collaboration, and reduce IT overhead. However, they’re also a gold mine for threat actors on the hunt for sensitive data and can bring a host of operational headaches. Additionally, SaaS sprawl can make organizations susceptible to misconfigurations, and each application is vulnerable to breaches.
What is SSPM?
SaaS security posture management (SSPM) platforms help businesses address SaaS risk. SSPM provides visibility into an organization’s SaaS applications by continuously monitoring configurations and user activity for compliance with organizational policies and industry standards. For example, SSPM solutions can identify misconfigured settings, overly permissive access rights, and other vulnerabilities that could expose sensitive data or disrupt operations.
This article will explore SSPM in detail, including benefits, key components, and common SSPM challenges organizations face.
Core concepts of SSPM
SSPM enables SaaS-focused security automation and monitoring that addresses security, privacy, and compliance risks. The three core concepts that enable an effective SSPM program are:
1. Visibility and governance: Provides visibility into applications and configurations, identifying compliance gaps and unauthorized tools while supporting approved alternatives.
2. User monitoring: Reviews permissions, activities, and risk for human and non-human identities, including connected and shadow applications.
3. Threat Detection: Monitors for unauthorized access, unusual activity, and suspicious data transfers, giving oversight into dynamic environments containing diverse devices and locations.
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Download SaaS Security Checklist5 benefits of SSPM
Fundamentally, SSPM helps organizations reduce the inherent risk that comes with SaaS applications. The sections below detail five practical benefits of SSPM for modern organizations.
Benefit #1: Collaboration between security teams and application owners
SSPM tools provide the visibility and communication tools required for effective collaboration between security teams, central IT, and application owners. It helps prevent configuration changes from going unnoticed and provides the channels needed for security teams to alert application owners when drifts and changes to configurations increase the risk of breaches.
Benefit #2: Near real-time threat detection and alerts
SSPM analyzes SaaS activity for threats, detecting unusual behavior like bypassing access controls or modifying sensitive settings in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. SSPM tools can also flag unauthorized access and trigger workflows that enhance application security.
Benefit #3: Automation of security tasks
Manual, repetitive management of SaaS applications is time-consuming and ineffective. SSPM automates configuration checks to provide continuous monitoring rather than periodic snapshot views of an application’s security settings.
Benefit #4: Security gap analysis and benchmarks
SSPM analyzes security gaps by comparing configurations against benchmarks like the NIST SP 800-53 to help prevent costly security incidents. These critical insights help security teams understand their SaaS security landscape and provide actionable steps to resolve issues. SSPM reduces data theft risks by detecting misconfigurations, such as weak endpoint management in Google Workspace or insecure file retention in Slack.
Benefit #5: Compliance alignment
SSPM tools simplify compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 by continuously checking SaaS application settings and comparing those settings with compliance requirements.
Challenges in SSPM adoption
No two organizations are the same. Even when stakeholders follow best practices, challenges may arise. Let’s break down some of the most common SSPM adoption challenges and how teams can address them.
Challenge #1: Integrating the entire SaaS stack
Most SSPM tools integrate with a limited number of applications out of the box. While they typically cover key applications like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft 365, they leave many applications exposed to risk.
CrowdStrike’s Falcon® Shield integrates with more than 150 applications, dramatically reducing the number of applications that are exposed. Additionally, Falcon Shield’s integration builder enables users to monitor all applications within the platform.
Challenge #2: Monitoring multiple tenants of the same app
Some SSPM vendors’ payment models are based on the number of integrations being monitored. One of the results of this is that companies lack the necessary budget to monitor every tenant, which leaves them exposed.
Falcon Shield’s payment model allows users to integrate as many applications as possible without charging extra fees. This allows security teams to compare instances and develop security baselines that can be applied across all tenants.
Challenge #3: Shadow app detection
Organizations can only monitor applications that they are aware of. When employees onboard their own applications without coordinating with security and IT departments, it leads to gaps in security.
Falcon Shield integrates with other security monitoring tools to effectively detect applications and nearly eliminate shadow applications. This prevents data from being exposed through these applications.
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Download Falcon Shield Solution Brief5 key components of successful SSPM implementations
An effective SSPM implementation takes the right combination of process and strategy. The five components below are essential to making an SSPM deployment successful.
Key #1: Mapping and planning
SaaS security programs begin with mapping the applications that are critical to your operations or contain sensitive information. Successful SSPM implementations begin by identifying and prioritizing the applications to monitor, while recognizing that nearly every application may contain sensitive data, customer information, or information that if breached, could lead to regulatory violations.
Key #2: Identify stakeholders
SaaS applications are owned and managed by business units whose goal is productivity and efficiency. Meanwhile, security teams are often left without visibility, knowledge or access to applications in use. Developing an effective SaaS security program requires collaboration and compromise between these two groups in a way that limits risk while enabling productivity.
Key #3: Develop short and long-term goals
Tracking progress and success is vital to establishing a long-term, successful SSPM program. When applications are onboarded, note the starting score for the SaaS stack and individual applications. Working with the app owner, set reasonable goals for improvement with timelines in place. Over time, this approach will show how security posture has progressed since being prioritized.
Key #4: Measure performance
Measure security posture over time to ensure accountability. Application security scores directly correlate to the level of risk inherent in any application. By tracking posture at set intervals, security teams can establish a security baseline and help ensure that all applications are on track in terms of reducing misconfigurations and reducing risk.
Key #5: Recognize the scope of SaaS security
SSPM covers a wide range of areas. In addition to misconfigurations, it is tasked with monitoring human and non-human identities and reviewing share settings of assets. It associates devices with users to prevent high-privilege users from accessing sensitive data with devices that could be vulnerable. SSPM also includes preventing GenAI mishaps from exposing data and is a key part of threat detection.
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SSPM FAQs
Q: What is SSPM?
A: SaaS security posture management (SSPM) platforms help businesses address SaaS risk. SSPM provides visibility into an organization’s SaaS applications by continuously monitoring configurations and user activity for compliance with organizational policies and industry standards.
Q: What is the primary focus of SSPM?
A: SSPM enables SaaS-focused security automation and monitoring that addresses security, privacy, and compliance risks. The three core concepts that enable an effective SSPM program are visibility, user monitoring, and threat detection.
Q: Why is SSPM important?
A: Fundamentally, SSPM helps organizations reduce the inherent risk that comes with SaaS applications.
Q: What are the benefits of SSPM?
A: Benefits of SSPM include real-time threat detection, security task automation, improved security teams collaboration, and compliance alignment.
Q: What is the difference between DSPM and SSPM?
A: SSPM is focused on securing SaaS applications and addressing their risks, while DSPM is focused on managing and securing data within cloud environments.
Hananel Livneh is a Product Marketing Manager at CrowdStrike focusing on Falcon Shield securing the SaaS world. Hananel was most recently the Head of Product Marketing at Adaptive Shield, a SaaS security company. Prior to that he was Senior Product Analyst at Vdoo, an embedded cybersecurity company. Hananel holds an MBA with honors from the OUI, and has a BA from Hebrew University in Economics, Political science, and Philosophy (PPE).
