The rise of SaaS applications has transformed the way organizations operate, enabling greater collaboration, agility, and efficiency. Business-critical tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Workday, NetSuite, and GitHub are essential for departments like sales, marketing, HR, finance, and R&D. These tools empower teams to work independently, adopt cutting-edge technologies, and innovate faster.
However, this same model poses significant SaaS security challenges for IT and security teams. Without centralized oversight, security professionals may lack the visibility, expertise, and control necessary to ensure SaaS applications are securely managed. This disconnect leaves organizations exposed to risks, from misconfigured applications to unauthorized data access, and creates roadblocks when managing risks and responding to security incidents.
In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of distributed SaaS management for organizations, delve into the security risks it introduces, and outline actionable steps security teams can take to address these challenges while maintaining productivity and collaboration.
What Is Distributed SaaS Management?
Distributed SaaS management refers to the practice where individual business units or departments independently select, manage, and administer SaaS applications, rather than relying on centralized IT oversight. This model supports agility and tailored tool adoption but often introduces security and governance complexities.
Benefits of Distributed SaaS Ownership
The decentralization of SaaS application management allows departments to choose and administer the tools best suited to their needs. This flexibility brings several advantages:
1. Tailored Tool Adoption
A decentralized approach to SaaS management allows departments to make decisions that align with their specific goals. Marketing teams can deploy platforms like HubSpot or Asana to streamline campaigns, while R&D departments may prioritize tools such as GitHub or Jira to enhance software development workflows. By granting ownership of SaaS applications to the departments that use them, organizations enable their teams to work more efficiently and adopt cutting-edge technologies.
2. Reduced Bottlenecks
This independence fosters productivity by allowing teams to select and manage applications without waiting for IT’s approval or support. For example, a finance team can implement an expense management tool to improve budgeting processes without delays, while HR departments might adopt Workday to streamline recruitment and onboarding. This flexibility reduces bottlenecks and ensures that critical operations aren’t hindered by reliance on IT.
3. Innovation Enablement
Decentralization promotes innovation by allowing departments to experiment with emerging technologies. Whether it’s marketing leveraging AI tools to enhance campaign strategies or sales teams integrating customer relationship management (CRM) tools to improve client engagement, this freedom allows organizations to stay competitive in fast-changing markets.
SaaS Security Risks in Distributed SaaS Models
While distributed SaaS management drives efficiency and innovation, it also creates complex security risks. Security and IT teams often struggle to maintain visibility, governance, and control over a sprawling SaaS ecosystem, leading to several key challenges:
1. Lack of Visibility Into SaaS Usage
IT and security teams typically oversee core applications like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace but may lack visibility into department-specific tools like Salesforce, Workday, or GitHub. This fragmented view makes it difficult to:
- Identify which applications are in use
- Track user accounts, permissions, and access levels
- Monitor sensitive data sharing or external integrations
2. Security Misconfigurations by Non-Security Admins
SaaS administrators in business units often prioritize ease of use over security, unintentionally creating security risks. Common missteps include:
- Configuring local user accounts that bypass corporate Single Sign-On (SSO) policies
- Granting broad permissions to third-party integrations without understanding their risks
- Misconfiguring data sharing settings, exposing sensitive information to external parties
For example, a marketing team adopting a GenAI-powered content tool may inadvertently grant it access to proprietary customer data without IT oversight.
3. Limited Application Expertise in Security Teams
Conversely, security teams often lack in-depth knowledge of department-used SaaS applications. Without familiarity with tools like Salesforce, Workday or GitHub, they may struggle to:
- Understand application-specific risks
- Provide tailored security guidance to business units
- Assess the business impact of potential misconfigurations
This knowledge gap complicates risk prioritization and remediation efforts, leading to inefficiencies and delays.
Shifting From From Blame to Responsibility in Securing Distributed SaaS Distributed SaaS Applications
Andy Ellis, Partner at YL Ventures and former CSO at Akamai, describes the security challenges of distributed SaaS management succinctly:
“Business units have disintermediated IT, yet they still have a security problem they don’t want to deal with. The CISO’s team often becomes the scapegoat, taking blame for security issues that arise because IT and security teams are locked out of managing these applications. SaaS applications like HubSpot or Salesforce are often invisible to IT, with business units pushing back on any security involvement. In today’s SaaS-native world, IT’s role is evolving—moving away from traditional tasks like deploying and patching servers to primarily managing security risks in SaaS environments.”
Ellis emphasizes the importance of collaboration: “Security teams need to shift their mindset from saying, ‘We didn’t deploy this, so it’s not our responsibility’ to ‘If the business is using it, it’s a business application, and our job is to secure it.’”
Bridging the Gap - Strategies for Secure Distributed SaaS Management
Valence Security provides a centralized SaaS security platform designed to address the challenges of distributed SaaS management while preserving the benefits of decentralization. By offering robust tools for visibility, collaboration, and control, Valence empowers security teams, SaaS admins, and business users to work together effectively and securely.
Centralized Visibility Across SaaS Applications
Valence enables organizations to consolidate visibility across all their SaaS applications, from Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to department-specific tools like Salesforce, NetSuite, and GitHub. With a unified view of user accounts, permissions, integrations, and configurations, security teams can quickly identify misconfigurations, overprivileged accounts, and risky external data shares. This comprehensive visibility eliminates blind spots and allows security professionals to take proactive measures to protect their organization.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Streamlined Management
Valence’s platform includes robust RBAC capabilities, allowing organizations to assign tailored access permissions to SaaS admins and security teams. This ensures that each team has the appropriate level of access to perform their responsibilities without compromising security. For example, SaaS admins can manage configurations and integrations for their applications, while security teams retain oversight and control over critical settings and policies. The Valence platform can also be used to provide clear, actionable guidelines for SaaS admins, helping to facilitate training on secure SaaS configuration practices. As a result, this simplifies security management for non-security experts.
Automating Risk Remediation To Reduce Burdens
SaaS administrators often hesitate to engage with security concerns—but what if managing SaaS risks, especially remediation, became far simpler? Valence makes this possible by combining ease of use with automated configuration monitoring and risk remediation. The platform identifies and resolves misconfigurations, excessive data shares, and risky integrations, significantly reducing the burden on teams.
Valence also empowers organizations to create policies that notify employees via Slack or email before changes occur, enabling direct engagement and timely remediation. By providing security teams with multi-choice remediation options and fostering collaboration with business users, Valence not only streamlines risk mitigation but also enhances SaaS security. This approach minimizes manual effort while boosting ownership and accountability among business users, creating a more secure and efficient SaaS environment.
Fostering Collaboration Between Teams
Valence fosters stronger collaboration by promoting transparency and shared responsibility across the organization. Security teams can partner with SaaS admins to implement best practices, while business users gain the tools and knowledge needed to make secure decisions. By shifting from a gatekeeper role to that of an enabler, security teams can build trust and cooperation, ensuring that security becomes a shared priority.
More Productive, More Secure with Valence
The distributed SaaS management model offers undeniable benefits for innovation and efficiency but requires a proactive approach to security. By fostering collaboration, consolidating visibility, and leveraging automation, organizations can secure their SaaS environments without compromising productivity. Discover how Valence Security helps you achieve this balance. Request a Demo today!
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