How to Classify and Prioritize SaaS Risk in Minutes, Not Months

SaaS Risk

Big idea: You don’t need a six-month program to get control—you need a fast, repeatable way to rank what’s riskiest right now. Waldo Security gives you that head start: we discover every SaaS app, tenant, account, and OAuth grant in minutes, auto-flag SSO gaps and risky OAuth scopes, then export audit-ready evidence. If you want the “easy button,” start with Instant SaaS Discovery and ship your packet from the SaaS Compliance Overview.

1) Five Questions That Sort 80% of Your Risk (Print This)

Public guidance says the order of operations for cloud/SaaS is inventory → least privilege → logging. Use these five yes/no questions to triage every app/tenant in minutes. If you answer “No” to any of 1–3, it’s automatically High. (CISA)

1. Is SSO+MFA actually enforced (no password side paths)? If users can still log in with passwords, it’s an attacker on-ramp. In Verizon’s 2025 DBIR, ~88% of Basic Web App Attacks involved stolen credentials. (Verizon)
   

2. Are end-user consents locked down (no broad scopes without review)? In Microsoft Entra you can allow only verified publishers and selected permissions, routing high-privilege/tenant-wide scopes for admin approval. If this isn’t configured, treat all new consents as risky until reviewed. (Microsoft Learn)
   

3. Are long-lived tokens governed (esp. offline_access)? Refresh tokens keep access alive long after password resets; they must be enumerated and revoked when idle or on offboarding. (Microsoft documents consent/permission behavior and token lifetimes.) (Microsoft Learn)
   

4. Is third-party access to Google Workspace scoped and controlled? Use App access control to limit or block OAuth apps by specific scopes; otherwise employee installs can over-reach. (Google Help)
   

5. Do we have telemetry flowing (audit logs to SIEM with drift alerts)? If not, you can’t prove control operation or catch new admins/public links in time to matter.
   

2) The 10-Minute Scoring Card (Copy/Paste)

Give each service a 1–5 on the five signals below; sum to a 25-point score. Anything ≥18 is “Fix Now.”

• Identity enforcement 5 = password logins observed to an SSO-catalog app 3 = SSO supported, but not enforced on every path 1 = SSO+MFA enforced; no password paths (verified)

• Token persistence 5 = offline_access + write/tenant-wide scopes 3 = offline_access with read scopes 1 = no durable delegated tokens or all monitored/rotated

• Exposure surface 5 = public links allowed in sensitive spaces / broad external sharing 3 = external guests with editor/admin roles 1 = strict link/guest controls and monitoring

• Business impact 5 = regulated or crown-jewel data (PII/PHI/financials, source code) 3 = internal confidential 1 = low impact

• Usage & blast radius5 = high adoption and many admins/integrations 3 = moderate adoption or few admins 1 = low adoption, tightly scoped

Why this works: it tracks the exact failure modes agencies and auditors care about (least privilege and logging), while accounting for the credential-heavy attack pattern DBIR keeps highlighting. (CISA)

3) Three Queries That Find Your Top 10 Risks Fast

A) Apps with traffic but no enterprise identity (unknown services)

SELECT domain
FROM proxy_logs
WHERE domain IN known_saas
EXCEPT
SELECT domain FROM idp_signins;

What to do: Either bring the app under SSO/MFA or retire it. This is the fastest way to close scope gaps before scanning or policy work. (Yes, inventory first.) (CISA)

B) Password logins to “SSO-only” apps

SELECT user, app
FROM idp_signins
WHERE app IN sso_catalog AND auth_method='password';

What to do: Flip enforcement, disable legacy endpoints, and notify affected owners. DBIR shows credentials remain the main door; close it. (Verizon)

C) Persistent & privileged OAuth grants

SELECT app, user, scopes
FROM oauth_grants
WHERE scopes ILIKE '%offline_access%'
  AND scopes ~ '(ReadWrite|mail.send|files.*write)';

What to do: In Microsoft Entra, restrict end-user consent to verified publishers and selected permissions; admin-approve tenant-wide/write scopes. Revoke stale grants; document revocations for audit. (Microsoft Learn)

4) One-Hour Remediation Sprint (Run It Weekly)

00–15 min — Confirm owners and impact For each high-score item, record owner, data class, and whether customers/finance/HR data is involved.

15–35 min — Fix identity paths

• Enforce SSO/MFA on high-impact apps; disable local/password routes. (DBIR motivation.) (Verizon)

• Rotate or revoke long-lived tokens; require re-auth with least-privilege scopes (offline_access only when justified). (Microsoft Learn)

35–50 min — Lock down consent & scopes

• Entra: allow user consent only for verified publishers and selected permissions; route high-privilege to admin approval. (Microsoft Learn)

• Google Workspace: use App access control to allowlist by specific OAuth scopes; block the rest. (Google Help)

50–60 min — Prove it Export SSO coverage, revoked grants list, admin changes, and sharing exceptions. That “evidence freshness” cuts time to identify/contain, a key cost driver in IBM’s breach study (~$4.44M global average). (IBM)

5) Your “Good in 30 Days” Dashboard

• Unknown → Known: % of SaaS usage tied to inventoried apps/tenants (aim +10 pts)

• SSO reality: # of password logins to SSO-catalog apps (trend ↓) (Verizon)

• OAuth health: # of offline_access + write/tenant-wide grants (trend ↓) (Microsoft Learn)

• Evidence freshness: % of artifacts updated in last 30 days (aligns to TRA logging expectations). (CISA)

Bonus: When You Need the “No-Glue” Version

You can wire up the joins yourself—or let Waldo do it. We correlate identity, collaboration, network, and OAuth data, auto-score the risks above, and give you one-click exports your auditors will accept. If speed is the goal, start with Instant SaaS Discovery and keep the receipts flowing from the SaaS Compliance Overview.