Best Practices for Protecting Your Assets with SaaS Data Security

Quick: which of the following does your organization use?

1. Google Workspace
2. Microsoft 365
3. Slack
4. Two or more of the above

If you answered (d), you’re in good company. As organizations come to rely more and more on SaaS for their day-to-day operations, the number of data assets in their SaaS systems grows larger and larger, numbering in the millions.

Simultaneously, more and more sensitive and mission-critical data ends up in SaaS assets. This makes SaaS data security essential for both strategic and regulatory reasons. The following post will explain SaaS data security, its key challenges, best practices and what to look for in a SaaS data security solution. 

What is SaaS Data Security?

SaaS data security is the protection of data in cloud-based software from unauthorized access, exposure and loss. SaaS data security ensures data integrity and confidentiality throughout its storage, transmission and processing within a SaaS environment.

Key Challenges and Threats in SaaS Data Security

Effective SaaS data security can be challenging to achieve for many reasons, including:

1) Shadow SaaS Apps 

The extendability of SaaS systems with third-party connected apps is one of the aspects of SaaS that streamlines workflows and drives productivity. Third-party addons and integrations are also easy for employees to add without consultation with your IT department. But since these apps are accessing your data without the approval or oversight of your information security team, they pose a threat to your data security.

2) Insider Risks

SaaS systems identify authorized users and extend trust based on the access credentials they enter. But an employee can be an authorized user and still be a threat. Departing employees may decide to take data with them to their new company, for instance.  

3) Over-permissions

SaaS systems grant access to data based on user permissions that are set per asset or group of assets. It is notoriously easy, however, to set permissions too wide. Sensitive financial data, for example, could easily be set for anyone in your organization to access - or even for public access.

5 SaaS Data Security Best Practices 

What do you need to do in order to protect the data stored in your organization’s SaaS assets?

1) Encrypt Your Data

Make sure your SaaS providers encrypt your SaaS data both in transit and at rest. End-to-end encryption is ideal. You also might want to look into independent methods of encryption on your endpoints.

2) Be on Top of Your Permissions

Regularly review the access permissions given to your SaaS assets. Public sharing should only be used on assets that absolutely need to be shared publicly for the role they play in the business. The same goes for organization-wide sharing: it should only be given to assets that truly need it. 

3) Be on Top of Your Connected Apps

Make sure that any third-party apps that connect to your SaaS ecosystem are trusted, legitimate apps. Additionally, check each app’s permission scope. An app that only needs to transfer data from Google Sheets to Google Calendar should not have permissions to modify data in Google Sheets. 

4) Educate End Users in Real Time

Because SaaS end users have direct access to your data and the ability to expose it, it is critical for them to have security education and awareness. Security training programs are commonly used, but oftentimes employees forget the information or disregard it out of convenience. More effective is letting a user know as soon as they attempt an action (e.g. a document share) that violates any information security policy. Even better is when you can delegate remediation of the action to the user.

5) Don’t Store Secrets in SaaS 

Access credentials, encryption keys, oAuth tokens and other secrets should never be shared over SaaS apps. And yet, we constantly see developers uploading AWS keys to Slack, where they are at increased risk of detection and exposure by bad actors. Make sure you have a way to detect a shared secret first - and remove it fast.

Ensuring Compliance in SaaS Data Security

The data in your SaaS systems is likely subject to multiple regulatory standards. Any PII (personal identifiable information) is regulated by CCPA (for California citizen data), GDPR (for EU citizen data), PIPEDA (for Canada citizen data) or the numerous other national data privacy laws. US health information must be protected as specified in HIPAA. PCI DSS requires SaaS providers managing credit card information to comply with specific security controls. ISO/IEC 27001 compliance is required for information management in many industries.

Failure to comply with any applicable data security standards can have many negative ramifications for your organization, from fines to legal penalties to reputation loss. 

What Features to Look for in Data Security Solution

To ensure that a SaaS data security solution will actually protect your data from loss or corruption, look for the following capabilities:

1) Accurate Detection of Sensitive Data

The best information security policies in the world won’t protect sensitive data if you haven’t identified it as sensitive. Detection tools based on regular expressions, for example, have a significant percentage of false positives. It’s essential to find a solution that uses multiple methods of detection, including sophisticated ones like NLP or machine-learning based approaches.

2) Near Real-Time Data Loss Prevention

A sensitive SaaS data asset can be shared, copied and the information moved on in less than a minute, if not sooner. Preventing SaaS data exposure requires a data security solution that moves at least that fast. Look for a solution that doesn’t depend solely on DLP scanning, but instead uses other contextual clues that can be analyzed faster to make quick and accurate calls. 

3) User Behavior Analysis

Detecting data security threats from insiders who have legitimate access to your sensitive data requires monitoring user behavior and detecting anomalies. Types of user behavior that should be monitored include logins, actions on the account level and asset interactions, including modifying and sharing data assets. Anomalous behavior should be identified when compared to usual behavior for that user or group.

FAQs

What is SaaS data encryption?

SaaS data encryption involves converting data into a secure format using cryptographic algorithms, ensuring that only authorized users with the correct decryption key can access it. This protects data during storage (at rest) and transmission (in transit), safeguarding it from unauthorized access and breaches in cloud environments.

What role does encryption play in SaaS data security?

Encryption in SaaS data security protects sensitive information by converting it into unreadable code, ensuring that only authorized users with the decryption key can access the data. It safeguards data both at rest (stored) and in transit (being transferred), preventing unauthorized access and reducing the risk of breaches. Encryption is vital for compliance with regulatory standards and maintaining customer trust, as it ensures the confidentiality and integrity of data in cloud environments.

What is the difference between SaaS data security and traditional  on-premise data security?

SaaS data security focuses on protecting data in cloud-based applications, relying on the SaaS provider for infrastructure security, shared responsibility models, and remote access controls. Traditional on-premise data security involves securing data within a company's physical infrastructure, where the organization has full control over hardware, software, and network security. The key difference lies in control and management; SaaS relies more on the provider, while on-premise relies entirely on internal resources.

How can businesses assess the security of their SaaS providers?

Businesses can assess the security of their SaaS providers by reviewing security certifications (e.g. ISO 27001, SOC 2), evaluating compliance with relevant regulations (e.g. GDPR, HIPAA) and examining the provider's data encryption practices. They should also assess the provider’s incident response plan, conduct regular security audits and review contractual obligations regarding data protection. Additionally, businesses can request security reports, and inquire about access controls, data backup procedures and the shared responsibility model.

DoControl SaaS Data Security Solution

DoControl’s SaaS Data Security solution provides advanced, comprehensive protection for all your data assets in Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Box, Zoom, Salesforce and more. DoControl’s coverage includes both data access governance and DLP, along with identity threat detection and response, which is critical for combatting insider risk in the SaaS environment. 

Add to that DoControl’s Shadow App Discovery and Remediation, which gives you complete visibility and granular control over all third-party apps connected to your SaaS ecosystem. DoControl’s Misconfiguration Management ensures that all your SaaS configurations are in line with industry standards, making DoControl a complete SaaS Security Posture Management solution. 

Make Your SaaS Data Security a Priority

If the sensitive data stored in your SaaS gets stolen or exposed, there will be a very high price to pay. The price is sometimes quite literal, as in the case of fines or class action suits, and sometimes figurative but no less real. Keep your sensitive data in the right hands - and out of the wrong hands - by implementing a strong SaaS data security solution.