What is SaaS Risk Management?
SaaS risk management refers to the processes by which organizations identify, assess, and mitigate security risks within their Software as a Service (SaaS) environments. As businesses increasingly rely on SaaS applications to manage data, workflows, and business operations, effective risk management becomes essential to maintaining secure and compliant systems.
What is SaaS Risk Remediation?
SaaS risk remediation is a critical part of risk management, involving the targeted mitigation of specific security risks in SaaS applications. These processes are essential for protecting sensitive data, maintaining compliance, and ensuring business integrity within SaaS environments.
Effective SaaS risk remediation across business-critical SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, GitHub, and Slack can help protect sensitive data, ensure the integrity of business processes, and support security compliance efforts. The risk remediation process is central to maintaining a secure SaaS ecosystem and ensuring that SaaS security risks are proactively managed, rather than merely identified.
As businesses rely more on SaaS applications, SaaS risk remediation has become crucial to prevent high-profile breaches and safeguard against evolving security threats. Recent SaaS attacks, including Microsoft’s Midnight Blizzard breach and the campaign targeting Snowflake customer tenants, have underscored the importance of remediation as both incidents involved unauthorized access to sensitive data, resulting in significant risk to users and companies alike. These breaches serve as stark reminders that identifying SaaS misconfiguration and other security risks is only part of the solution—effective remediation is essential to protect against future incidents.
Key SaaS Security Risks
Effective SaaS risk remediation starts with understanding the unique security risks associated with SaaS applications. According to Valence’s 2024 State of SaaS Security Report, some of the most prevalent risks in SaaS environments include:
Misconfigurations
As SaaS platforms grow in complexity, 43% of organizations cite SaaS configuration challenges as a leading concern. Misconfigurations in SaaS applications can expose sensitive data or enable unauthorized access, particularly when settings are altered by frequent application updates or human error.
External Data Shares
SaaS platforms intentionally make it easy to share fuels, recordings, messages, and other data sets. This helps foster collaboration and productivity. But external data shares, such as when shared with private emails (gmail, yahoo, etc.), or shared with “anyone with the link”, can be extremely risky. A particular subcategory of this risks in inactive data shares. Approximately 94% of external file shares remain inactive with no recent usage, leaving organizations vulnerable to unauthorized access. Without regular audits, these dormant shares can expose sensitive data to third parties long after their intended use.
Lack of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Alarmingly, 100% of organizations have failed to fully implement MFA across all SaaS accounts. Attacks on Snowflake customer tenants revealed how a lack of MFA can heighten exposure to data breaches.
Non-Human Identities
SaaS-to-SaaS integrations can also be a double-edged sword, helping to increase productivity and efficiency, but also creating new risks. These integrations are authenticated via non-human identities (NHIs). For every human identity in SaaS, there are 8.6 non-human identities (such as OAuth tokens, API keys and service accounts), which can be difficult to monitor and secure. Unmonitored non-human identities can be exploited if not properly managed and remediated. The Midnight Blizzard breach and the Cloudflare breach are examples of the risks of NHIs.
Lifecycle Management Challenges
Unmanaged user-created accounts, often referred to as “shadow IAM,” exist outside of centralized identity providers (IdPs) like Okta. These local accounts bypass IT’s lifecycle management controls, remaining active even when users leave the organization. Without centralized oversight, these accounts often remain unmonitored, creating security gaps that attackers can exploit.
Shadow IT and Unmanaged SaaS ApplicationsLifecycle Management Challenges
Shadow IT refers to unsanctioned SaaS applications that employees subscribe to outside of approved channels, often to fulfill immediate work needs. These applications bypass IT oversight, posing significant security risks by introducing security risks that remain hidden from the security team’s view. Additionally, Shadow AI—unauthorized generative AI solutions used without IT knowledge—add new layers of complexity and potential data exposure. Organizations must monitor and manage these blind spots to ensure a secure SaaS environment.
These risks highlight why SaaS cybersecurity must extend beyond identification to include a dedicated risk remediation strategy.
The Importance of SaaS Risk Remediation
Effective SaaS risk management extends beyond simply identifying risks; it requires comprehensive remediation to reduce attack surfaces, protect data, and prevent regulatory penalties. The following benefits illustrate why active SaaS risk remediation is a cornerstone of SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM):
- Prevention of SaaS Data Breaches: Addressing misconfigurations and reducing excessive permissions limits potential points of entry for attackers. Remediation helps prevent SaaS data breaches like those seen with in recent SaaS attacks.
- Compliance Assurance: SaaS applications often store and process regulated data. Remediation helps organizations meet compliance standards (e.g., NIST, HIPAA, ISO 27001) by securing access points and configurations that would otherwise remain vulnerable.
- Reduced Attack Surface: Removing unused accounts and disabling unnecessary integrations reduces the number of potential entry points for attackers, protecting sensitive data and assets.
Challenges of SaaS Risk Remediation
While essential, remediation can present challenges due to decentralized ownership, manual processes, frequent SaaS updates, and complex integrations. Ensuring robust SaaS risk management requires both strategic oversight and efficient remediation tools. The challenges include:
- Distributed Ownership and Decentralized Control: SaaS applications are often managed by different departments, making it difficult to enforce consistent security policies across the organization.
- Manual Workload for Remediation: Many organizations still rely on manual processes to remediate identified security issues. This approach can be inefficient and error-prone, consuming valuable resources and time. Without centralized visibility into SaaS usage, organizations struggle to identify potentially critical SaaS risks, often resulting in delayed remediation efforts and prolonged exposure to data exposure.
- Frequent Updates and Changes: SaaS applications are frequently updated, which can alter configurations and require regular re-assessment to maintain security.
- Complex Web of SaaS Integrations: Each SaaS integration introduces additional risk, adding to the complexity of managing and remediating security threats.
- Balancing Security and Productivity: Security protocols can sometimes disrupt workflows, so a balanced approach that maintains usability without sacrificing security is essential.
SaaS Risk Management FAQ
While essential, remediation can present challenges due to decentralized ownership, manual processes, frequent SaaS updates, and complex integrations. Ensuring robust SaaS risk management requires both strategic oversight and efficient remediation tools. The challenges include:
What is Risk Management in SaaS?
Risk management in SaaS involves identifying, prioritizing, and addressing security risks within SaaS environments. By focusing on SaaS-specific security risks—such as misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and SaaS-to-SaaS integrations—organizations aim to minimize vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches or compliance failures.
What are the Third-Party Risks of SaaS?
Third-party risks in SaaS stem from integrations with external SaaS applications, non-human identities, and external data shares. Each connection to a third party increases the risk of unauthorized access or data exposure.
Is SaaS High-Risk?
SaaS applications present unique risks, particularly due to the decentralized nature of their management and the high volume of integrations they support. With complex configurations, shared data, and potential for shadow IT, SaaS can be high-risk if not managed proactively.
What is SaaS Security Posture Management?
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) is the continuous process of managing and securing SaaS applications by monitoring configurations, managing user access, and ensuring compliance with security standards.
How Do You Ensure SaaS Security?
Ensuring SaaS security involves implementing multi-layered measures, including Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), access controls, continuous configuration monitoring, and regular audits to address misconfigurations and inactive accounts.
How Valence Helps with SaaS Risk Remediation
Valence empowers security teams to manage SaaS security risks through a flexible "Remediation by Choice" approach. This includes guided steps, automated actions, and direct manual fixes, enabling teams to address security issues efficiently and effectively. With Valence, organizations can proactively manage and remediate risks and ensure robust security across their SaaS environment.
Valence has the most comprehensive and flexible options for SaaS risk remediation. Our capabilities fall into five distinct categories:
- Guided Remediation
Valence provides detailed guidance on how to remediate issues within SaaS applications. This feature offers a clear, step-by-step list of remediation actions that security teams can follow to address vulnerabilities effectively. - Ticketing Integration
Our platform allows users to open tickets in systems such as ServiceNow or Jira, streamlining the process of pushing fixes to SaaS administrators. - One-Click Remediation
Valence empowers security teams to apply one-click fixes directly from the platform without navigating into individual SaaS applications. - Business User Collaboration
As SaaS applications are increasingly managed by various business units, security teams rely on collaboration with these users to gain insights into SaaS usage and the context of configurations. Valence facilitates this collaboration through automated communications via email and Slack, allowing security teams to engage users in the remediation process. - Automated Remediation
Valence enables security teams to define security policies that automate the remediation of SaaS security risks.
By focusing on SaaS risk management and implementing comprehensive remediation strategies, Valence helps organizations achieve a resilient security posture across their SaaS environments.
Learn more about Valence’s SaaS Security platform, or schedule a demo today to see it in action.
