SSPM vs CASB: Building a Comprehensive SaaS Security Strategy

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have become a cornerstone of modern business operations, offering unmatched convenience, scalability, and efficiency. Organizations now rely on an average of 130 SaaS applications to drive productivity and collaboration—a significant increase over the last decade. According to industry reports, the global SaaS market is projected to reach $374 billion by 2026, underscoring the rapid adoption of cloud-based tools. However, this growth introduces risks such as misconfigurations, unauthorized access, and shadow IT, which account for most cloud-related breaches caused by human error or preventable vulnerabilities. These challenges highlight the need for proactive security measures tailored to SaaS environments. Two key tools address these needs: SaaS security solutions like SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) and Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Each tackles distinct aspects of SaaS security, making it crucial to understand their differences to help you build an effective defense strategy. It’s important to remember, it’s not SSPM vs CASB; it’s SSPM and CASB.

What Is SSPM?

SSPM—or SaaS Security Posture Management—focuses on securing the SaaS applications themselves, rather than just monitoring user interactions and activity like CASBs do. SSPM provides a broader security model, protecting external users, SaaS-to-SaaS integrations, and cloud-to-cloud data flows that bypass CASB enforcement. Instead of relying on an external proxy, SSPM enforces security directly within each SaaS application, ensuring stronger and more granular governance over misconfigurations, access controls, and third-party integrations.

Key functionalities of SSPM

• Detecting misconfigurations: Identifies misconfigured settings, such as overly permissive sharing rules or unsecured administrative controls, that could expose sensitive data. SSPM continuously scans for these vulnerabilities across SaaS platforms like Salesforce and Workday to prevent breaches before they occur.
• Identity and access management: Monitors user accounts, roles, and access privileges across SaaS applications. SSPM detects issues like privilege creep, orphaned accounts, and excessive permissions and integrates with identity providers (IdPs) to help enforce the principle of least privilege.
• Compliance monitoring: Continuously assesses SaaS configurations against frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001. SSPM automatically generates reports and dashboards to highlight compliance gaps and track remediation progress.
•  Posture benchmarking and risk scoring: Assigns risk scores to SaaS applications and configurations based on security posture. These scores enable organizations to prioritize remediation and compare posture across business units or application types.
• Third-party app and OAuth risk management: Tracks connected third-party and OAuth apps, evaluating their scopes and permissions. SSPM flags risky or over-permissioned integrations and alerts security teams to potentially malicious access paths.

Together, these capabilities allow security teams to stay ahead of SaaS-specific risks that traditional tools often miss.

SSPM’s proactive approach

Unlike reactive security measures, SSPM focuses on:

• Mitigating risks unique to SaaS, such as third-party application vulnerabilities and SaaS-to-SaaS integrations
• Ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA by maintaining secure configurations
• Preventing breaches by addressing security gaps before they escalate

For companies managing complex SaaS ecosystems, SSPM provides critical visibility into misconfigurations and access controls, reducing the likelihood of costly security incidents.

What is CASB?

A CASB solution acts as an intermediary between users and cloud service providers, ensuring that data usage and access comply with security policies. CASBs provide critical control and visibility, addressing external risks in cloud environments. This makes CASBs especially valuable for businesses with distributed workforces or hybrid cloud models.

Key functionalities of CASB

• Threat detection and prevention: Protects against threats such as malware, phishing, and insider risks by analyzing data movement and policy violations. CASBs do not directly detect login anomalies or enforce authentication methods like MFA but integrate with identity providers and security analytics tools to enhance access control. CASBs monitor user actions within their enforcement scope but may not capture cloud-to-cloud integrations or SaaS-based risks beyond their proxy or API coverage.
• Data protection: Enforces encryption and access controls to safeguard sensitive data in transit and at rest. Encryption ensures that, even if a breach occurs, critical information remains secure.
• Shadow IT discovery: Identifies and manages unauthorized applications used by employees, mitigating associated security risks. This capability is crucial, as shadow IT can account for up to 40% of an organization’s SaaS usage.

CASB’s reactive approach

CASBs monitor cloud environments in real time to:

• Control data access based on user roles, devices, and locations.
• Detect anomalies like unauthorized file sharing or unusual login attempts.
• Enforce compliance with standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.

By offering visibility into cloud usage and precise control over data, CASBs effectively address real-time security risks. For example, CASBs can prevent sensitive customer data from being shared externally or downloaded to unauthorized devices.

Unlike SSPM, CASBs rely on proxy- or API-based enforcement, only controlling traffic that flows through their gateways. Therefore, CASB controls have a critical limitation: they can be bypassed completely through SaaS-to-SaaS connections, backdoors introduced through misconfigurations, and direct access by external users.

Key differences between SSPM vs CASB

While both tools strengthen SaaS security, they address different challenges:

Focus areas

• SSPM: Secures internal SaaS configurations, permissions, and settings.
• CASB: Monitors external data movement, enforcing data protection policies and detecting threats.

Core use cases

• SSPM: Identifies and fixes misconfigurations proactively, ensuring secure SaaS-to-SaaS connections.
• CASB: Detects threats like malware and enforces data encryption for compliance.

Approach to risk

• SSPM: Prevents security issues at the SaaS application level by managing misconfigurations, permissions, and third-party integrations before they lead to data exposure.
• SaaS security posture management (or SaaS security more broadly): Focuses mainly on prevention by securing the application itself, not just how users access it, and by addressing vulnerabilities before incidents occur.
• CASB: Monitors and enforces policies on data movement, primarily for corporate users and traffic that passes through its enforcement scope. CASBs do not provide proactive security at the SaaS configuration level, making SSPM essential for securing modern SaaS environments.

SSPM acts as a security architect, ensuring that SaaS applications are configured securely from within, while CASB serves as an access controller, enforcing policies on data movement and interactions. While both enhance SaaS security, SSPM provides a broader scope, covering SaaS misconfigurations, SaaS-to-SaaS integrations, and external user access—areas that CASBs often do not monitor effectively.

When to use SSPM vs CASB

Organizations should deploy SSPM and CASB based on their security priorities:

Where SSPM excels

• Managing large SaaS stacks: SSPM provides unified visibility and control over complex SaaS environments with multiple applications and integrations.
• Ensuring compliance: Industries like healthcare and finance require continuous monitoring to meet standards like HIPAA and SOX. SSPM ensures configurations remain aligned with compliance requirements.

Where CASB excels

• Securing distributed cloud environments: CASBs help enforce access policies by integrating with identity providers like Okta to ensure security rules are applied during authentication. However, CASBs do not directly perform authentication, nor do they independently detect login anomalies. These functions typically reside within IAM tools or behavioral analytics platforms.
• Monitoring data movement: CASBs detect and prevent unauthorized data transfers, ensuring sensitive information remains secure. This is critical for organizations managing proprietary data or customer information.

Overlap and integration

SSPM and CASB address different areas of SaaS security, but their overlapping features create a unified defense strategy:

• Compliance monitoring: Both tools help align with standards like GDPR and HIPAA by securing data and configurations.
• Threat detection: CASBs monitor user actions through a proxy or API integration, which helps detect anomalies related to file transfers and external sharing. However, CASBs do not control SaaS-based misconfigurations or govern SaaS-to-SaaS integrations—gaps that SSPM addresses by enforcing security policies directly within each application’s native settings.

How SSPM enhances CASB

SSPM provides the granular visibility into SaaS applications that CASBs often lack:

• Managing SaaS-specific risks: SSPM detects vulnerabilities in application configurations and permissions.
• Proactive remediation: SSPM offers step-by-step guidance to address risks, strengthening overall security.

In Zero Trust architectures, CASBs attempt to act as centralized Policy Decision and Enforcement Points (PDP/PEP), but their visibility is limited to the traffic they can intercept or access via APIs. SSPM, on the other hand, leverages the native security and configuration controls of each SaaS application, effectively turning the application itself into its own PDP/PEP. 

This model enables more granular policy enforcement within the application itself, including least-privilege access, secure configuration baselines, and management of external or SaaS-to-SaaS integrations. It also ensures that security policies remain effective even when user actions bypass network-based controls entirely.

Why enterprises need both SSPM and CASB

It doesn’t have to be SSPM vs CASB; it can instead be SSPM and CASB. Modern SaaS ecosystems are complex, with interconnected applications, third-party integrations, and growing user bases. SSPM and CASB together offer comprehensive protection for these environments:

Internal SaaS security with SSPM

• Prevents misconfigurations, over-permissioned access, and third-party application vulnerabilities that lead to data exposure.

External cloud protection with CASB

• Monitors data flows, detects threats like malware, and mitigates risks from shadow IT.

Cost and efficiency benefits

Combining SSPM and CASB delivers measurable advantages:

• Comprehensive coverage: Addresses misconfigurations, external threats, and compliance
• Operational efficiency: Reduces manual monitoring, freeing IT teams for strategic priorities
• Cost savings: Prevents costly breaches and ensures regulatory compliance

AppOmni provides unmatched depth and scale in SaaS security. By continuously monitoring configurations, access policies, and third-party integrations across your SaaS estate, AppOmni helps enterprises proactively reduce risk, even in areas where CASB and SSE controls fall short.

Conclusion: Why SSPM and CASB work better together

SaaS security tools like SSPM, along with CASB, are essential for securing modern SaaS environments. While SSPM prevents internal risks by securing configurations, CASB defends against external threats by monitoring real-time activity and data movement.

Together, SSPM and CASB provide:

• Proactive risk prevention and real-time threat detection.
• Comprehensive compliance and operational efficiency.

As SaaS environments grow more complex, combining SSPM and CASB ensures organizations maintain a robust security posture. Request a free risk assessment today to evaluate how these tools can safeguard your SaaS ecosystem.