Shining a Light on Shadow IT—Announcing Valence's SaaS Discovery Capabilities

As organizations rapidly adopt Software as a Service (SaaS) to drive innovation and productivity, a hidden challenge is growing alongside it: shadow IT. These are unsanctioned SaaS applications brought into the workplace without IT or security team approval, creating significant risks related to sensitive data exposure, compliance gaps, and governance challenges. Shadow generative AI (GenAI) tools further exacerbate these challenges by requiring broad data access and increasing the potential for data misuse. 

To combat this, Valence Security is proud to announce the availability of our SaaS discovery capabilities, offering unmatched visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS applications. By delivering a comprehensive SaaS inventory, Valence empowers organizations to mitigate shadow IT risks, improve governance, and enhance operational efficiency.

Why Now? Addressing the Long Tail of SaaS

Valence Security has long been a trusted partner for enterprises seeking to protect their most business-critical SaaS applications, including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, GitHub, Okta, and others. Our SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) capabilities enable organizations to identify misconfigurations, manage human and non-human identity risks, and secure the sensitive data housed within these platforms.

But security is never static. In conversations with our customers, we heard a consistent request: help us uncover and govern the long tail of SaaS applications. These lesser-used, secondary or unsanctioned apps, adopted by individual employees or teams, often operate outside of IT oversight. The result? Blind spots that expose organizations to unmanaged identities, data risks, redundant tools, and compliance violations. 

In response to customer demand, Valence developed our SaaS discovery capabilities to address this need, ensuring our customers can leverage a continuously updated inventory of all SaaS applications for comprehensive security and governance.

The Risks of Shadow IT and Shadow AI

Shadow IT introduces a wide range of risks that security teams cannot afford to ignore:

• Sensitive Data Exposure - Employees often upload sensitive data to applications that the security team is not monitoring or connect unsanctioned apps to sanctioned ones, potentially exposing sensitive data to unvetted third parties.
• Unmanaged Identities - Apps that are not governed by the corporate identity provider (IdP) or SSO often lack MFA enforcement, leaving local accounts vulnerable to unauthorized access and account takeover.
• Failed Offboarding - An ex-employee or contractor might have adopted a SaaS app while working with the company, with the account persisting long after their departure, posing long-term risks due to blind spots to the organization.
• Generative AI Risks - AI tools, like ChatGPT and MidJourney, are typically adopted as SaaS applications and amplify these risks by ingesting sensitive company data. Research shows between 31% and 38% of AI-using employees admit to entering sensitive work data into those AI tools—including customer details, employee information, and company financials—creating compliance and privacy challenges.
• Compliance Violations - Failure to monitor unsanctioned tools can result in non-compliance with industry regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA, or contradict industry standards like ISO, NIST, SOC2, and others. 

These risks not only compromise your security posture but also inflate your attack surface, making effective management of SaaS sprawl essential.

Introducing Valence SaaS Discovery

Valence’s new SaaS discovery capabilities empower organizations to uncover shadow IT, mitigate risks, and maintain governance across the SaaS ecosystem. With Valence’s discovery engine leveraging integrations with IdPs and CASBs, SaaS-to-SaaS integration monitoring, email metadata, and browser logs, customers gain unmatched visibility into both sanctioned and unsanctioned apps—leaving no blind spots in the SaaS ecosystem. By leveraging multiple detection methods, Valence creates a comprehensive, continuously updated SaaS inventory.

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Valence combines visibility with actionable insights to secure your SaaS environment holistically:

• Discover Shadow IT: Identify unsanctioned apps that bypass IT approval, exposing your organization to risk
• Monitor Shadow AI: Gain visibility into generative AI tools and reduce risks related to sensitive data ingestion 
• Manage SaaS Sprawl: Build a continuously updated SaaS application inventory of all applications, whether sanctioned or not 
• Strengthen Identity Security: Detect local accounts and applications outside of your your IdP, enforce MFA/SSO, and support comprehensive SaaS offboarding and lifecycle management
• Simplify Governance: Consolidate redundant tools and eliminate shadow apps to streamline operations and reduce costs

Beyond Discovery: Comprehensive SaaS Security

Valence’s new SaaS discovery capabilities seamlessly expand our holistic SaaS security platform, which also offers:

• SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM): Valence continuously audits SaaS configurations to identify misconfigurations and detect configuration drift over time. Valence highlights risks such as widely shared files, inactive accounts, excessive admin access, and high-privilege SaaS-to-SaaS integrations. Security teams can align SaaS settings with industry standards like NIST, ISO, and CIS to prioritize action and maintain compliance. By addressing these issues, organizations can enforce security policies, protect sensitive data, and ensure governance across their SaaS applications.
• Risk Remediation: Valence’s unique "Remediation by Choice" approach combines guided steps, ticketing integrations, direct one-click fixes, automated workflows, and business user collaboration, enabling teams to address risks effectively. These extensive remediation capabilities make SaaS risk finding easy to operationalize and reduce the attack surface.
• SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR): Valence provides real-time visibility into human and non-human activities, enabling rapid threat investigation and response. By uncovering hidden risks and suspicious events, organizations can protect sensitive SaaS data and respond swiftly to identity-related threats.

Take Control of Your SaaS Ecosystem

As shadow IT and shadow AI continue to grow, the need for comprehensive SaaS security has never been clearer. Valence’s new SaaS discovery capabilities help organizations uncover hidden applications, mitigate risks, and strengthen their overall security posture.

Ready to see it in action?
Request a Demo today and take the first step toward eliminating blind spots in your SaaS ecosystem.

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