MIO Partners Strengthens Security Posture with Automated SaaS Management through Valence

SaaS Security Challenges

Manual Workflows and Limited Visibility

MIO previously faced significant challenges in securing their SaaS environment. One major hurdle was the resource-intensive nature of data gathering. Extracting data from native SaaS applications was 
a time-consuming task, making it difficult to conduct regular security assessments. Additionally, existing security features and tools offered limited capabilities for quantifying security risks across their core SaaS applications.

MIO also relied on manual workflows to remediate identified security issues, a process that was not only inefficient but also prone to errors. Furthermore, the lack of comprehensive visibility into SaaS adoption and usage across different departments made it difficult to identify potential security risks associated with shadow IT or unauthorized app usage.

The cumulative effect of these challenges had an impact on MIO's overall security posture and business operations. Security tasks became deprioritized due to the time required to manage the SaaS environment. The manual remediation process often resulted in slow security patching, leaving vulnerabilities open for attackers to exploit. Additionally, resource constraints made it impossible to continuously monitor core SaaS applications for suspicious activity. Finally, MIO struggled with data sprawl due to challenges in controlling external sharing permissions, particularly in Microsoft 365 and Zoom, due to distributed adoption of SaaS by business units. This increased the risk of sensitive information being accidentally or maliciously exposed outside the organization.

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MIO Partners' SaaS Environment

MIO, like many organizations, has increasingly relied on a variety of SaaS applications to facilitate business operations. MIO incorporates Microsoft 365—including extensive usage of Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint—Box, Zoom, Okta, and Atlassian, offer a range of functionalities that improve storage, collaboration, productivity, automation and access to critical data.

Results

MIO's implementation of Valence Security has yielded significant improvements in their overall security posture and operational efficiency.

Valence's automated visibility and remediation capabilities have been instrumental in providing MIO with a comprehensive understanding of their SaaS environment. This newfound insight has empowered MIO to proactively identify and mitigate potential security risks. For instance, over 90% of their dormant corporate data shares from OneDrive were eliminated, significantly reducing the attack surface. Additionally, the platform helped streamline user offboarding across MIO's SaaS applications, ensuring that access privileges are revoked promptly upon employee departure. As a result of their initial findings in Valence they are also using automated reporting to ensure new risks, such as failed user offboardings, are quickly identified and triaged.

Beyond enhanced visibility, Valence's automated workflows have played a critical role in improving MIO's security posture. The platform automates tedious tasks such as revoking unnecessary SaaS integrations and open link shares, freeing up valuable IT resources that can be directed towards more strategic initiatives. MIO was particularly impressed by the capabilities of Valence's automated workflows: "Automated workflows unlocked business value that would have taken intensive manual resources otherwise." This automation, coupled with improved visibility, has resulted in a significant reduction in security misconfigurations across Microsoft 365 and Okta. This included an over 65% decrease in dormant SaaS-to-SaaS integrations removed from Microsoft 365.

The platform's focus on collaboration has fostered better communication between security, SaaS admins and business users. The centralized view of user activity and security controls provided by Valence facilitates a collaborative approach to security management, ensuring that business needs are met while maintaining a strong security posture. Overall, MIO experience with Valence Security demonstrates the platform's effectiveness in enhancing security, improving operational efficiency, and streamlining SaaS management.