What Is SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)? | Zscaler.
What Is SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)?
SaaS security posture management (SSPM) is an approach to securing SaaS apps and data that unifies continuous cybersecurity risk assessment and compliance monitoring with detection, enforcement, and remediation. Effective SSPM solutions provide critical visibility into the security posture of organizations’ software-as-a-service deployments, ensuring they can continue using cloud services to accelerate and streamline operations.
Overview
- SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) enhances SaaS app security by monitoring for risks, misconfigurations, and compliance gaps.
- It provides real-time visibility, automates remediation, and helps enforce zero trust principles, securing sensitive data and reducing the risk of breaches.
- With SSPM, organizations can govern app integrations, ensure compliance, and protect their multi-SaaS environments.
Why Do Enterprises Need SSPM?
In short, SSPM tools help enterprises better secure and manage their SaaS applications and data, enabling them to more efficiently and effectively:
- Find and secure SaaS data with expanded visibility and granular policy enforcement
- Respond to identity risks by establishing and enforcing least-privileged access controls
- Harden SaaS cloud posture by addressing misconfigurations and configuration drift
- Govern risky app integrations with in-depth shadow IT discovery and auditing
With companies now using an average of 130 SaaS apps (Vendr, 2023), all of this is becoming more important in the modern workplace. Popular platforms and apps such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack may be used by nearly every employee at an organization where they’re deployed, and they’re often brimming with business-critical data. This data can be, and often is, exposed due to misconfigurations, the main cause of today’s largest breaches.
In spite of this, SaaS security is still a major blind spot in many organizations. Overlooking the security of SaaS apps drastically increases the risk of data loss, leakage, and threats as security teams cope with:
- Poor sensitive data visibility, including where sensitive data is located and how it’s used across SaaS platforms
- Risky access and permissions, such as overprivileged access, exposing SaaS data and the organization to security threats
- Dangerous misconfigurations stemming from human error as well as complexities and discrepancies among multiple apps
- Lack of shadow IT visibility when users integrate risky third-party apps into SaaS platforms, potentially exposing data
What Is SaaS Security Posture?
SaaS security posture is the overall security status and resilience of a SaaS environment, including all measures in place to protect data, maintain compliance, and reduce risk associated with SaaS apps.
How Does SSPM Work?
SSPM works by providing these essential functions:
- Continuous monitoring for moment-to-moment visibility into your sensitive data and SaaS security risks across identity, permissions, misconfigurations, integrations, and add-ons
- Configuration assessment to ensure that, among other settings, security configurations for SaaS apps align with best practices as well as any relevant industry or regional compliance standards
- Remediation and response, including risk triage as well as both guided and automated policy enforcement, to close security gaps and minimize the potential impact of cyberattacks
Key Features of SSPM
These are some of the key solutions and tools that serve one or more functions of SSPM:
- Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) act as intermediaries between users and cloud services, providing security and compliance controls. They offer features like data loss prevention, threat protection, and access control.
- Identity and access management (IAM) solutions manage users’ identities, roles, and permissions to help enforce least-privileged access controls.
- Data loss prevention (DLP) tools help identify and protect sensitive information in SaaS apps, prevent data leaks, and support compliance.
- Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms collect and analyze events and logs from SaaS apps to help identify and respond to potential security incidents and policy violations.
- Data encryption tools, usually native to SaaS apps themselves, encode data at rest (in storage) and in motion (moving to or from an endpoint or service) to protect it against unauthorized access.
- Vulnerability management tools scan SaaS apps for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to help organizations proactively mitigate security risks.
- Application programming interface (API) security tools protect data exchanged between SaaS apps and other systems as part of API-based integrations.
- Zero trustprinciples require security policy to be based on context established through least-privileged access controls and strict user authentication—not assumed trust.
Key Benefits of SSPM
- Find and secure SaaS data: Get total visibility across data in transit to and already within SaaS apps, and enforce granular policies to control risky exposure.
- Respond to identity risks: Leverage a zero trust approach to revoke excessive privileges and restrict risky user profiles from accessing SaaS apps and data.
- Harden SaaS cloud posture: Continuously monitor SaaS platforms for dangerous misconfigurations, and fix risky configuration drift due to human error or oversight.
- Govern risky app integrations: Leverage in-depth SaaS shadow IT discovery to identify and audit risky third-party app integrations or add-ons.
Comparison: SSPM vs. CASB vs. CSPM
SaaS security posture management (SSPM), cloud access security broker (CASB), and cloud security posture management (CSPM) solutions each focus on particular areas of cloud security.
Quick breakdown
| SSPM | CASB | CSPM |
|---|---|---|
| Continuously monitor and assess the security of SaaS apps and infrastructure to pinpoint and address vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and noncompliance | Provide security and control over apps and data as they move between an organization's on-premises infrastructure and cloud service providers | Continuously monitor and assess the security of cloud environments (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) to identify and remediate misconfigurations and vulnerabilities |
| Activity monitoring, data protection, and configuration management | Access control, data loss prevention (DLP), and visibility into user activity across SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS | Configuration management, compliance, and risk mitigation in cloud environments |
| Manage SaaS app security configurations, ensure secure user access, protect data, ensure regulatory compliance | Help prevent data breaches by giving security teams a clearer view of, and more control over, cloud data policy and security | Identify and mitigate misconfigurations, address vulnerabilities, and apply best practices to secure overall cloud infrastructure |
SSPM Use Cases
Through continuous monitoring, threat detection, enforcement, and remediation of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across your SaaS environment, SSPM enables you to:
- Manage compliance with regional or industry standards and benchmarks
- Mitigate risks that lead to data breaches, unauthorized access, and the like
- Conduct vulnerability assessments to help identify and close security gaps
- Discover, assess, and mitigate the security risks associated with shadow IT
- Assess the impact and remediate security issues in the event of a breach
Zscaler SSPM Can Help
Zscaler SSPM, part of the Zscaler Data Security suite, is a comprehensive and unified solution that delivers complete security across SaaS apps and platforms, from data visibility to posture and governance. SSPM helps you quickly identify SaaS risks and prevent threats from compromising data and your organization by enabling you to:
- Identify risky misconfigurations: Secure your sensitive data from open gaps and risk integrations that can lead to data loss or breaches.
- Retire risky or dormant integrations: Reduce your attack surface by vetting all SaaS platform integrations and revoking risky connections.
- Enforcezero trust access: Ensure least-privileged SaaS access and revoke overprivileged identities and permissions.
- Maintain posture and compliance: Continuously monitor SaaS security to ensure regulatory compliance is maintained across the organization.
By empowering you to find and secure SaaS data, respond to identity risks, harden SaaS cloud security posture, and govern risky app integrations, Zscaler SSPM gives you complete control over your SaaS security.