SaaS Security for Financial Services: Fighting Risk Without Slowing Innovation

Martin Snyder
3 days ago
4 min read

If you’re shipping new digital experiences while juggling regulators, here’s the good news: you don’t have to choose between speed and safety. Waldo Security discovers every SaaS app and account in minutes (including shadow and AI tools), right-sizes risky OAuth permissions, enforces SSO/MFA guardrails, automates offboarding across the long tail, and exports audit-ready evidence—so your teams can build while you stay compliant. Start with Instant SaaS Discovery, then keep auditors satisfied with our SaaS Compliance Overview.

Why finance is different (and harder)

Financial institutions don’t just have “more audits.” You operate under overlapping, fast-evolving rules that elevate third-party risk and operational resilience:

DORA is now live in the EU (as of January 17, 2025), raising the bar for ICT resilience, third-party oversight, and incident reporting across banks, insurers, and investment firms. (ESMA)
NYDFS 23 NYCRR 500 amendments (Nov 2023) tightened controls for covered entities—more granular risk assessments, incident response, and board oversight—with phased effective dates through 2024. (Department of Financial Services)
PCI DSS 4.0.1 is the active standard, with many future-dated requirements effective March 31, 2025—not just for card environments, but also for vendors whose SaaS touches PAN data flows. (PCI Perspectives)
FFIEC continues to define examiner expectations around information security, third-party oversight, and logging—setting the tone for U.S. banking supervision. (FFIEC)

Meanwhile, the risk picture isn’t abstract. Verizon’s 2025 DBIR again spotlights credential-driven web-app attacks—exactly what proliferates in unmanaged SaaS. (Verizon) And IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach pegs the global average at about $4.4M, with an “AI oversight gap” raising costs where tools are adopted without governance. (IBM)

Translation: your controls must extend beyond the core banking stack to every SaaS, extension, plug-in, and partner tenant that can touch funds, customers, or regulated data.

Where risk hides in financial-services SaaS

Shadow and duplicate tenantsPilots and vendor “sandboxes” quietly become production. They live outside SSO, logging, or data retention standards—and outside your contract terms.
Unconstrained OAuthA well-meaning “Sign in with …” consent grants broad scopes plus offline_access, creating persistent access that a password reset won’t revoke.
External guests and suppliersThird parties accumulate roles over time (trading partners, data vendors, claims processors). Offboarding misses them; audit trails are fragmented.
Public links and over-sharingMarketing sites, product documentation, even model-risk files end up broadly shared. In finance, those links can be material to audits and disclosure.
AI assistants and extensionsBrowser-level AI tools extract snippets from tickets, chats, or code. Without an allowlist and publisher verification, you have untracked egress.

The “speed without drag” playbook

1) Map reality first (SaaS discovery)

Aggregate IdP sign-ins, email and collaboration logs, DNS/proxy, browser extensions, and spend into a single, deduped inventory of apps, tenants, accounts, and OAuth grants. Tag each with owner, department, SSO/MFA status, admin count, scopes, and data sensitivity. This aligns with FFIEC’s emphasis on asset identification and logging, and gives you a DORA-ready third-party view. (FFIEC, ESMA)

With Waldo: Discovery builds this living inventory in minutes, including shadow and AI tools.

2) Put identity at the center (SSPM basics)

Enforce SSO + MFA for high-sensitivity apps.
Right-size roles; time-box admin elevation.
Tighten user consent: verified publishers only; admin approval for high-privilege scopes and multi-tenant apps. (This directly cuts DBIR-style credential/web-app risk.) (Verizon)

3) Tame OAuth persistence

Locate grants with *.ReadWrite.All, directory-level permissions, or offline_access. Revoke unused refresh tokens; convert broad scopes to read-only where feasible; require app reviews for new scopes.

4) Close the egress taps

Disable public links by default in sensitive workspaces; restrict external sharing domains; monitor mass exports and anomalous downloads—key to PCI, NYDFS, and DORA expectations. (PCI Perspectives, Department of Financial Services, ESMA)

5) Automate the long tail of offboarding

HR event → remove access everywhere (including niche SaaS and tokens) → transfer ownership → capture evidence. This is where most programs fail during exams.

6) Make evidence continuous

Stream SaaS audit logs to your SIEM; maintain exportable packets (SSO coverage, admin changes, token revocations, sharing exceptions, offboarding timestamps). Faster identification and containment correlates with lower breach costs. (IBM)

With Waldo: One-click exports from the SaaS Compliance Overview mapped to your frameworks.

A 60-day rollout that won’t spook product teams

Days 1–15: See it

Run discovery; tag app owners; publish a clean catalog and a “fast path” for new vendor onboarding.

Days 16–30: Stabilize it

Enforce SSO/MFA on top-risk apps; remove stale admins; revoke idle persistent tokens; allowlist verified publishers for consent.

Days 31–45: Govern data flow

Turn off public links; restrict external shares; add guardrails for AI assistants/extensions; document exceptions with owners and timers.

Days 46–60: Prove it & rehearse

Wire logs to SIEM; generate your first monthly evidence pack; run a tabletop on BA/vendor compromise to test DORA/NYDFS incident and notification procedures. (ESMA, Department of Financial Services)

KPIs examiners (and boards) actually respect

Unknown → Known: % of traffic/spend tied to inventoried apps
SSO/MFA coverage: across high-risk applications
OAuth health: # of high-privilege grants with offline_access; % reduced MoM
Third-party hygiene: # of external guests with admin or data-export roles
Evidence freshness: % of control artifacts updated in last 30 days
IR speed: time from alert to “who/what/which scope,” time to revoke

Where Waldo fits

Discovery that finishes: Map sanctioned and shadow SaaS, AI tools, tenants, and accounts—fast.
Guardrails, not gates: Enforce SSO/MFA, right-size roles, and set consent policies without blocking the work.
OAuth governance: Spot the combinations (broad scopes + persistence) that create quiet backdoors.
Long-tail offboarding: Remove access and tokens across every app, not just the big suites.
Audit-ready proof: Exportable, framework-aligned evidence for DORA/NYDFS/PCI/FFIEC expectations.

Financial services can move fast and stay safe—if you start from a truthful map of your SaaS, keep identity at the center, and treat evidence as a living product. Waldo makes that routine instead of heroic. Begin with Instant SaaS Discovery, then operationalize compliance with the SaaS Compliance Overview.