The role of a chief information security officer (CISO) is becoming increasingly important as the dynamic landscape of cybersecurity threats now affects nearly all aspects of business. As today’s security threat environment evolves, SaaS security posture management (SSPM) has become a key part of a CISO’s security defense plan.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has become an integral part of modern business operations as the majority of companies now use cloud solutions to support their operations. Across all industries, SaaS platforms provide unmatched scalability and flexibility and have quickly become the go-to solutions that enhance collaboration, productivity and efficiency. However, as SaaS environments expand in complexity and use, the need for robust security also becomes paramount.

A Growing Need for SSPM

With over 55% of security executives reporting they have experienced a security incident in their SaaS environment over the last two years, SSPM has emerged as a cornerstone of present and future cloud security, strengthening both proactive and reactive security capabilities. And when you factor in the cost of a data breach – which IBM pinpoints at $4.45 million – SSPM represents both an investment and an insurance policy for companies.

A subset of the broader cloud security framework, SSPM is an API-based solution that connects to a company’s SaaS applications and helps companies analyze data, ensure continuous monitoring, identify patterns, react to anomalies and proactively prepare for future attack scenarios. To reduce the attack surface and minimize the future possibility of a breach, SSPM also provides an inventory of best practice solutions for regulatory compliance and a record of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to create security policies.

Components of an Effective SSPM

SSPM stands at the forefront of SaaS security. It offers companies a strategic approach to fortify their security postures and manage risk effectively. It also ensures the seamless integration of SaaS applications within a secure and compliant framework. An effective SSPM solution helps a company gain key insights to identify misconfigurations, control over-permissions, stay alert to anomalous and risky user behavior, quickly pinpoint compromised accounts and monitor third-party apps continuously including those connected by both human interaction and machines. With new market entrants competing with more established providers, selecting the best SSPM solution involves careful consideration of various factors.

An effective solution needs to help companies establish a discover-control-protect framework. As cloud environments have a complex and constantly changing threat landscape, CISOs can build SSPM solutions into their present and future business strategy by looking for these must-have characteristics:

Effective SaaS Application Discovery
The key to adequate protection is continuous monitoring of the posture of SaaS applications at the metadata level to provide alerts to exposure. SSPM solutions allow companies to optimize their security team’s time and effort in monitoring third-party applications through prioritized alerts and real-time data, so they can undertake the remediation of threats faster.

Configuration Management
SSPM helps security teams stay up-to-date with monitoring and security updates of SaaS applications, identities and data within the security infrastructure. Once a security baseline is established, SSPM solutions alert teams to any deviations from the baseline to monitor and control configuration drift and detect any other configuration-related vulnerabilities. By implementing an SSPM, posture checks are automated to save time and ensure precision.

Identity, Permission and SaaS Application Monitoring
With an SSPM solution, companies can monitor identities to see who has access to what applications. SSPM best practices require the implementation of least privileged access, which ensures that users get the access they need, but not more because uncontrolled access usually exposes the company to additional and unnecessary risk.

Ready-To-Use Policies Based on TTPs
Reputable SSPM solutions will have a library of ready-to-use policies created based on real-world cyberattack scenarios that use various ransomware, account takeover and insider threats TTPs.

Prioritized alerts
Prioritized alerts provide the ability to develop responses to insider threat, account takeover, or ransomware. They facilitate the development of an incident response plan specific to SaaS applications that should outline the steps to be taken in the event of a security breach, including communication protocols and mitigation strategies.

Integration with Existing SIEM or SOAR Solution
Integration between SSPM, SIEM and SOAR enhances an organization’s ability to detect, respond to, and mitigate security threats effectively. SOAR platforms can integrate with SSPM to create automated responses to certain security events for which they can apply set rules according to established policies, and they can also initiate set remediation processes when SSPMs identify misconfigurations.

Adherence to Compliance Frameworks
SSPM solutions can continuously check SaaS security posture against built-in compliance policies, frameworks and due diligence best practices, such as HIPAA security rule, NIST cybersecurity framework, HITRUST CSF, ISO/IEC 27001, or CIS, SOX and SOC 2, FFIEC cybersecurity assessment tool, PCI DSS, SWIFT customer security controls framework and GLBA.

The process of selecting a security posture management (SSPM) vendor is a serious endeavor that requires planning and meticulous evaluation. While the process may seem complicated and even daunting, the choice of an SSPM solution that fits a company’s present and future needs will be a worthy investment with a high return.