How to Build a SaaS Risk Register in Under 30 Minutes

SaaS Risk Register

If you’ve got more apps than daylight (and who doesn’t?), a lightweight risk register is the fastest way to separate “nice to fix” from “must fix now.” Waldo Security gives you the truth map first—we discover every SaaS app, account, tenant, and OAuth connection in minutes, then help you enforce SSO/MFA, right-size risky permissions, automate offboarding, and export audit-ready evidence. Start with Instant SaaS Discovery, and turn your register into clean proof via our SaaS Compliance Overview.

Why a 30-minute register works

Two facts drive the approach:

• The average org still runs ~106 SaaS apps. You won’t boil that ocean today—but you can rank it and act. (BetterCloud)

• Credential abuse remains a leading path into web apps, so anything outside SSO/MFA or with excessive tokens deserves top billing. (Verizon)

And yes, the playbook aligns to public guidance: inventory → least privilege → logging before deeper control mapping. (CISA)

The 30-minute build (five quick sprints)

Minutes 0–5 — Define scope & fields

Decide you’re ranking SaaS apps and integrations (not laptops, not clouds). Create a simple sheet with these columns:

• App / Tenant

• Owner / Department

• Data Sensitivity (PII/PHI/Code/Financial/Low)

• SSO/MFA (Enforced? Y/N)

• Admin Count

• OAuth Risk (broad scopes like *.ReadWrite.All? offline_access?)

• External Sharing (public links? guests with editor?)

• Recent Usage (active/inactive)

• Risk Score (see below)

• Mitigation & Due Date

For the scoring, borrow NIST’s likelihood × impact mindset so you can justify the number later. Keep it 1–5 for each, then multiply. (NIST CSRC, NIST Publications)

Minutes 5–12 — Pull a minimal inventory

Grab what you can reach right now:

• IdP sign-ins (Microsoft Entra/Okta) to see which apps users actually hit

• Email/Collab suite logs for guest activity and public links

• DNS/Proxy hits for apps your IdP doesn’t see

• Expense data for tools with charges but no SSO events

This multi-signal view is exactly what public references prescribe: know your services before you tune controls. (CISA)

With Waldo, this step is mostly automated—discovery correlates identity, email, network, browser extensions, and spend so your sheet starts populated.

Minutes 12–18 — Score fast with a pragmatic rubric

For each app or tenant, give Likelihood (1–5) and Impact (1–5):

• Likelihood clues: No SSO/MFA, local passwords, unverified OAuth app, offline_access refresh tokens, many external guests, default-open sharing. (Credential-driven web-app abuse is your north star here.) (Verizon)

• Impact clues: Touches PII/PHI/financials or source code; admin access; broad write scopes; business-critical workflows.

Risk Score = Likelihood × Impact (max 25). Sort descending. You now have an ordered punch list—no meetings required.

Minutes 18–24 — Assign owners & decide mitigations

Work the top of the list first:

• Identity: Enforce SSO/MFA; remove stale admins; time-box elevation. (Zero-trust basics; less privilege = less blast radius.) (CISA)

• OAuth: Restrict end-user consent to verified publishers and low-risk scopes; admin-approve high-privilege or multi-tenant apps; revoke unused refresh tokens. (CISA)

• Sharing: Turn off public links in sensitive spaces; expire guest access by default.

• Evidence: Note what changed and when—you’ll need that for audits and insurers. (Faster identification/containment is strongly correlated with lower breach cost.) (IBM)

Add the Mitigation and Due Date columns as you go so nothing stalls after the meeting.

Minutes 24–30 — Sanity check & publish

Ask three questions:

1. Are the top 10 clearly owned? (If not, assign them now.)

2. Do fixes reflect the three pillars? Inventory complete enough to act; least privilege enforced; logging on for proof. (CISA)

3. Can you show this to an auditor tomorrow? (If yes, you’re already ahead.)

Ship the sheet to Security/IT leads and set a monthly 30-minute review to re-score drift and close items.

With Waldo: export your register + artifacts (SSO coverage, admin changes, token revocations, offboarding timestamps) from the SaaS Compliance Overview—no screenshot marathons.

Copy-ready templates (steal these)

Risk score rubric (1–5 each):

• Likelihood: 1 (SSO+MFA, no risky tokens) → 5 (no SSO, offline_access, public links, many guests)

• Impact: 1 (low-sensitivity, read-only) → 5 (PII/PHI/code/finance, write scopes/admin)

Default mitigations by signal:

• No SSO/MFA: Enforce both, disable local passwords

• Broad OAuth scopes: Swap to read-only; require admin approval; revoke idle tokens

• Public links/guests: Default-deny; restrict domains; auto-expire guest roles

• Dormant admins: Remove or time-box

What “good” looks like in 2 weeks

• Register covers 90%+ of active apps (expect ~100+ in many orgs—don’t chase perfection). (BetterCloud)

• Top 20 risks have owners and due dates.

• Identity & OAuth guardrails in place for high-impact apps.

• Monthly evidence packet auto-generates from system logs.

Frequently asked (so you can answer quickly)

“Is this NIST-aligned?”

Yes—the scoring mirrors NIST SP 800-30’s risk assessment approach (likelihood × impact), adapted for SaaS posture signals. (NIST CSRC)

“Will this slow teams down?”

No—guardrails, not gates. You’ll allow fast approvals for verified publishers and safe scopes while blocking the riskiest patterns.

“Why start with services instead of data?”

Because services move the data. Inventory-first is straight from CISA’s reference architecture and avoids scanning the wrong places. (CISA)

Turn the register into momentum

A 30-minute register won’t solve everything—but it focuses effort where it matters and gives you proof you can reuse for customers, auditors, and insurers. If you want the “easy button,” we built it: get the map with Instant SaaS Discovery, then make the register a living artifact with exports from the SaaS Compliance Overview.