For large enterprises, SaaS (Software as a Service) applications have become the backbone of modern business operations. From productivity tools to industry-specific platforms, SaaS solutions are essential for scaling, driving innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage. However, as SaaS adoption grows, so do the security risks. The challenge for large enterprises is not just about protecting a few tools — it’s about managing hundreds or even thousands of applications, many of which may fly under the radar.
How can large enterprises effectively secure their SaaS environments without hindering productivity or increasing complexity? Let’s walk through five critical steps that every enterprise should follow to ensure robust SaaS security at scale.
Step 1: Create a Comprehensive Security Map
In an enterprise environment, “Shadow IT” is a significant issue. Employees across departments often sign up for SaaS tools without formal approval, using corporate email addresses to access software that isn’t being monitored by IT. This creates a sprawling network of unapproved apps, making it difficult to manage security risks.
Creating a comprehensive security map involves discovering and cataloging every SaaS application used across your organization. Enterprise-grade SaaS discovery tools are essential for this task, as manual surveys or audits won’t capture the full scope. By identifying these applications, you’ll have a clearer picture of your SaaS landscape and can begin to assess which tools need immediate security attention.
Step 2: Clarify and Enforce Responsibility
In a large enterprise, SaaS security responsibilities are distributed across multiple stakeholders, including IT, compliance, legal, and individual business units. This complexity can lead to confusion and security gaps, especially when accountability isn’t clearly defined.
To ensure no aspect of SaaS security falls through the cracks, it’s essential to clarify responsibilities at every level. Your IT team should be responsible for configuring authentication protocols like Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), while business unit leaders should be accountable for ensuring compliance with security policies. Additionally, vendors play a crucial role in managing infrastructure security and data protection, but they don’t cover everything. Establish clear ownership and enforce these roles to maintain a strong security posture.
Step 3: Align SaaS Applications with Compliance and Security Policies
Enterprises often operate under strict regulatory requirements — whether it’s SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific regulations. Ensuring that all SaaS applications in use align with these compliance frameworks is non-negotiable.
First, verify that all your SaaS tools meet your organization’s regulatory and security standards. This includes checking for proper encryption practices, data residency controls, and audit trails. It’s also important to enforce secure access methods like MFA and SSO to prevent unauthorized access. When onboarding new SaaS applications, these compliance and security checks should be part of the approval process to avoid any gaps in your enterprise’s overall security posture.
Step 4: Continuously Monitor and Perform Security Assessments
As enterprises grow and adopt more SaaS tools, continuous monitoring becomes crucial to maintaining security. With hundreds or thousands of SaaS applications in use, it’s easy for vulnerabilities to slip through the cracks. This is where real-time monitoring and automated security assessments become indispensable.
Use SaaS security platforms that can provide ongoing visibility into the health of your applications, monitoring for changes in risk profiles, emerging vulnerabilities (like those identified by CVEs), and compliance violations. Regular security assessments should also be scheduled to ensure that applications continue to meet both internal and external security standards over time. Continuous monitoring gives you a proactive approach to identify risks before they escalate into major security incidents.
Step 5: Leverage SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Tools
For enterprises managing a vast SaaS ecosystem, security posture management (SPM) is essential. SSPM tools enable you to assess the security configurations of your SaaS applications in real-time, helping you identify misconfigurations, excessive user permissions, or other vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches.
Enterprises can’t afford to rely on manual configuration checks — SSPM tools automate this process, ensuring that your SaaS applications are continuously monitored and secure. Misconfigured applications are a leading cause of data breaches in enterprise environments, and using posture management tools ensures that your SaaS environment remains locked down and compliant with your security policies.
Top 5 SaaS Security Solutions for Large Enterprises
Here’s an overview of some of the best SaaS security solutions for large enterprises, with insights into their strengths and limitations in an enterprise context.
Pros:Waldo Security is an emerging player in the SaaS security space. Its strength lies in SaaS discovery and governance, making it ideal for enterprises looking to gain visibility into their vast SaaS landscape. Waldo helps enterprises map their applications to compliance frameworks and identify gaps in security controls, such as SSO and MFA enforcement.
Cons:While Waldo excels in governance and policy mapping, it lacks advanced posture management capabilities. For enterprises that need detailed control over app configurations and user permissions, Waldo may need to be supplemented with a dedicated SSPM tool.
2. Zscaler
Pros:Zscaler is a well-established player in network security, offering strong network-level control over SaaS access. It’s particularly useful for enterprises that need to manage and secure outbound traffic to SaaS applications across global networks. Zscaler enables granular control over which applications are accessible, helping to enforce SaaS policies across large-scale environments.
Cons:While Zscaler is excellent for managing network traffic, it doesn’t provide deep insights into SaaS applications themselves. It lacks the ability to detect specific SaaS signups, user activities, or app configurations, meaning it doesn’t offer the full visibility enterprises need for comprehensive SaaS security management.
3. Varonis
Pros:Varonis is a powerful tool for enterprises that need to protect sensitive data across SaaS platforms, particularly Office 365. It provides robust data classification and monitoring, helping you prevent unauthorized access or data leakage. Varonis also offers some SaaS security posture management features, allowing enterprises to monitor and adjust application settings.
Cons:Varonis’s posture management is limited to a few key platforms like Office 365. If your SaaS ecosystem includes a wide variety of tools, Varonis might not provide enough coverage for your needs.
Pros:Obsidian Security offers a comprehensive solution for securing enterprise-grade SaaS applications like Salesforce, Office 365, and other high-use platforms. It provides advanced analytics and threat detection features, helping enterprises identify anomalies, misconfigurations, and potential risks across their SaaS tools.
Cons:One of Obsidian’s limitations is its lack of discovery capabilities for applications that are not linked to the enterprise’s identity provider. It’s highly effective at managing known applications but falls short when it comes to identifying shadow IT or unauthorized SaaS tools.
5. Netskope
Pros:Netskope is a leader in SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) and provides enterprises with in-depth visibility into SaaS configurations, ensuring that applications like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Zoom are properly secured. Its robust set of features helps large enterprises monitor, adjust, and audit SaaS configurations across multiple departments and teams.
Cons:Like Zscaler, Netskope’s discovery capabilities are limited. While it offers strong posture management for known applications, it doesn’t provide comprehensive discovery of all SaaS applications and accounts, leaving potential gaps in your enterprise’s security visibility.
Conclusion
SaaS security is complex, especially for large enterprises with thousands of applications in use across multiple departments, teams, and locations. However, by following these five steps — creating a comprehensive security map, clarifying responsibilities, ensuring alignment with compliance, continuously monitoring risks, and leveraging posture management tools — enterprises can effectively manage their SaaS environments without compromising security.
Selecting the right tools is critical. Whether you choose Waldo Security for SaaS discovery and governance or Netskope for posture management, your decision should align with your specific needs for visibility, compliance, and risk management. SaaS security isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, but with the right strategy and technology in place, even the largest enterprises can maintain strong security across their SaaS ecosystem.
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