SaaS Security: Prioritizing Security for Cloud Apps Part 1
If you’re an effective leader, you’re always looking for ways to make business processes more efficient and your infrastructure more streamlined. Many organizations begin their digital transformation by moving to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications. Cloud-based applications help make your people more productive. They also open up new ways of collaborating and communicating. More than 11,000 SaaS available applications provide more opportunities than ever to propel your business forward.
With people connecting directly to the internet, bypassing old defenses, and storing information in the cloud, old approaches to security no longer apply. The cloud is akin to the wild west for a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO): an unfettered environment with limited visibility and control that can leave your people, critical data, and intellectual property (IP) exposed and vulnerable.
Most traditional security products are largely reactive and focus on keeping the bad guys out—despite the inconvenience and expense it places on your organization and your people. In contrast, we at Forcepoint believe a human-centric approach that represents the modern cybersecurity path forward. It’s an approach that delivers visibility and context into anomalous behavior on a network while dynamically automating security response based on the level of risk. In taking a more one-to-one versus one-to-many approach to security organizations can identify breaches before they happen and move left of breach with frictionless security that keeps employees productive.
Making it Safe to Work from Home: Shifting Perspectives in Security
Many organizations are enabling, or through government mandate requiring, employees to work from home or other remote locations. As a result, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) support continues to gain popularity as employees connect to their company network via cloud applications and the device of their choice. While this flexibility enables your remote workforce to remain productive while remote, it also opens up more avenues for data leakage and potential breaches.
The typical company uses 600 to 1,000 SaaS apps. But, on average, only 59% of organizations have a formalized BYOD policy—which makes security gaps inevitable. Almost all organizations have to deal with the problem of Shadow IT: employees are using unapproved cloud-based apps by the IT department. Unmanaged endpoints leave people and data vulnerable; security teams lack the visibility to how data is being accessed and used and organizations can’t effectively enforce data protection policies.
SaaS apps, remote work, and dependence on the cloud is the new reality; organizations must ensure that business resilience isn’t sacrificed as a result of any advantages gained.
By embracing certain shifts in perspective relevant to today’s new way of working, you will ensure your security strategy is built for the modern workforce and that your people and data are at the forefront of your growth.
Interested in learning more? Listen to Doug Cahill, VP & Group Director of Cybersecurity at ESG discuss best practices in SaaS application security in this webcast. Click of the link or the image below to tune in.
