Best practices to mitigate data breaches on SaaS platform

Enterprise software businesses methods have undergone a transformation for deploying their products in the past decade. Earlier, a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software package operating on a client's on-premise hardware infrastructure used to be the standard offering. However, that has become outdated, and is replaced by storing data and software "in the cloud" as the common approach under IT security. This novel strategy adopted globally by both small and large companies is often described as Software as a Service, or SaaS.

SaaS revenues are expected to account for around one-third of all corporate software sales by 2020, growing at a forecasted rate of 20% per year. SaaS may save operating costs, speed up innovation, and cut down on spending on outmoded technologies, but it is sadly not the proverbial golden goose. The issue is that those powerful cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, haven't given security enough priority in their offerings.

Cybersecurity attacks are causing a whooping 3 billion USD in yearly financial damages. Furthermore, it is estimated that such attacks will cause $10.5 trillion USD in damages overall by 2025. Notwithstanding the fact that SaaS is unquestionably the "way to go," considerable effort needs to be done to safeguard SaaS users, their clients, and the cloud vendors themselves from the grasp of the nefarious cybercriminal.

Here is what companies can incorporate in their SaaS network security posture to keep it robust and fool-proof-

SaaS Network Security Guidelines

1. Identify hazards

Before you can secure your SaaS web development application, you must be aware of the vulnerabilities to cloud security. The following are the greatest security threats for SaaS applications:

Attacks through phishing

Account takeovers (ATOs)

Theft of data

Attack using Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Security configuration error

Risk of data access

Inadequate transparency

Inadequate logging and observation

Insufficiently strong service level agreements (SLAs)

Insider dangers

Attacks on zero day

Create a security review checklist after you have a clear understanding of the risks, and then make ongoing efforts to lessen or remove the dangers that could have an impact on your SaaS application.

2. Establish a security review checklist

By establishing a security review checklist, you can assess your SaaS security requirements more rapidly. This will enable you to prioritise application security and quality. You may then routinely evaluate and update your checklist with fresh cybersecurity attack concerns or hazards.

3. User-level data security monitoring

Organisations must routinely check the security of user-level data to comply with internal and external application security protocols. The cloud service provider will provide you with role-based access control (RBAC) tools that let you specify user-specific access and other activity permissions. It ensures the highest level of security for SaaS apps and verifies that only the right people have been given permission to access data on SaaS web development applications.

4. Data encryption

Use data encryption strategies to make sure your SaaS web development application is secure. Both data at rest and data in transit are protected from unauthorised users through data encryption. Without the encryption keys, malicious hackers cannot decrypt the encrypted data.

5. Train your staff

Provide security training to inform them of current dangers and how to defend their SaaS apps from common phishing, vishing, cross-site scripting, and other attacks. To protect them and their SaaS apps, teach your staff about complete zero-trust policies, data loss prevention (DLP) technology, and identity and access management procedures. With security awareness training, employees can readily defend against many dangerous hacking attempts.

6. Include real-time protection in your SaaS apps

By including real-time monitoring in your SaaS web development applications, you can improve their visibility, control, policy management, and compliance while also safeguarding your data from misuse. Your SaaS apps are shielded against attacks like account takeovers, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting thanks to real-time monitoring. Real-time protection technologies can be incorporated throughout the development process, assisting in the early detection of attacks and the prompt mitigation of SaaS cybersecurity attack vulnerabilities.

7. Establish SaaS security controls

Organisations must create SaaS cybersecurity attack controls to protect SaaS applications from potential risks and threats. These security measures are intended to locate, stop, and lessen security hazards. A few security precautions that each organisation needs to take are as follows:

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Password control policy

Data encryption and tokenization

Advanced malware prevention

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Proxy-based real-time detection

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Logging and monitoring controls

8. Put data retention and deletion rules into place

According to legal requirements, data must be kept and deleted. For SaaS services, data retention regulations are essential, especially for account management and subscriptions. They typically play a crucial part in compliance, enable you to create backups, and let you liberate space on your files. To implement data retention, organisations must be clear about which data must be kept. Customer data that is no longer necessary for valid purposes must be deleted. The generation and maintenance of fresh pertinent logs are guaranteed by accurate and fast execution of the data deletion policy.

9. Maintain certification and audit compliance

To guard against cybersecurity attacks, data loss, and sensitive data theft, it's imperative to maintain all necessary certifications. Every firm is required to hold the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and SOC 2 Type II certifications (System and Organization Controls).

How can Kodehash be of assistance?

Because businesses store a lot of sensitive information in SaaS applications, including payment card information and Personally Identifiable Information (PII), as well as business-related activities like financial transactions, records, and other things, SaaS environments are becoming a seductive target for cybercriminals. In order to protect their customers' data from cybercriminals and prevent being a target of cyberattacks, organisations need to secure SaaS apps. To fully protect SaaS applications, top-notch security procedures must be put in place.

Kodehash, one of the prominent cybersecurity companies, uses SaaS network security posture management to identify security flaws in SaaS applications. This automated tool identifies discrepancies between declared security policies and real security posture, and continuously monitors your company's SaaS applications. It further identifies incorrect configurations, unused user accounts, compliance risks, excessive user permissions, and other cloud security issues to keep the business security posture fool-proof.