SSPM vs IAM: How SSPM Complements IAM for Comprehensive SaaS Protection

Widespread adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications has introduced significant cybersecurity risks. Increasingly, threat actors target identities as their entry points, exploiting weaknesses in authentication and configuration settings. Traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions help manage user access, but alone, they can’t secure all SaaS-specific vulnerabilities. That’s why businesses need both Identity and Access Management (IAM) and SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) to fully protect their critical data. Let’s dig into SSPM vs IAM and why they complement each other so well to improve SaaS security.

What is IAM?

Identity and Access Management (IAM) defines and manages who or what has access to enterprise resources, ensuring users only access the data and tools necessary for their roles. IAM enforces access policies and authentication standards like single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). It streamlines user lifecycle management—from onboarding through role adjustments to offboarding—enhancing security and efficiency.

However, IAM alone struggles to address certain critical SaaS-specific security challenges. While IAM effectively controls initial access, it offers limited visibility into threats occurring after entry, such as internal misconfigurations, OAuth token vulnerabilities, shadow IT integrations, or risks posed by non-human identities. These gaps can leave organizations vulnerable to significant SaaS security incidents.

The limitations of IAM in SaaS security

IAM primarily manages entry points to resources. But once users or services gain access, IAM’s visibility drastically diminishes. For instance, IAM typically does not detect:

• SaaS application misconfigurations that can bypass role-based access controls
• Abuse of OAuth tokens, increasingly exploited by attackers for backdoor entry
• Risky SaaS-to-SaaS integrations (shadow IT)
• Non-human identities, such as APIs or service accounts with persistent, embedded permissions that may never expire
• Insider threats or excessive privileges that remain unnoticed within SaaS platforms

These visibility gaps in IAM systems create exploitable vulnerabilities within the SaaS estate.

What is SSPM?

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) tools continuously monitor SaaS environments for misconfigurations, policy compliance, and identity-related vulnerabilities. SSPM acts as a critical second line of defense, enhancing visibility far beyond IAM’s initial access control.

SSPM solutions provide:

• Real-time monitoring and assessment of SaaS configurations
• Identification of inactive or over-permissioned accounts
• Visibility into shadow IT and third-party app integrations
• Detection and remediation of risky OAuth tokens and authentication practices

SSPM fills gaps left by IAM, offering deeper insights that significantly enhance SaaS security posture.

Identity security challenges in SaaS

As organizations increase their reliance on SaaS applications, securing identities has become increasingly complex—and critical. While user authentication remains a fundamental step, securing SaaS identities extends beyond just people. Security teams must address a growing range of identity-related threats, spanning both human and non-human entities, as well as vulnerabilities arising from modern authentication methods like OAuth.

Human versus non-human identities

Securing identities means addressing two distinct categories:

• Human identities: Employees, contractors, or partners who regularly access SaaS applications.
• Non-human identities: Automated entities like application programming interfaces (APIs), bots, automation scripts, and service accounts, which often have extended privileges and limited oversight.

Non-human identities can be especially vulnerable. For example, unused API keys or hard-coded credentials hidden within SaaS applications are easily overlooked by traditional IAM solutions, creating backdoor opportunities for attackers.

OAuth token risks in SaaS environments

SOAuth simplifies authentication between applications without requiring users to share passwords directly, significantly enhancing usability and convenience. However, its complexity also creates security challenges, expanding the attack surface. OAuth-related vulnerabilities, often stemming from misconfigurations during implementation, have become increasingly common.

A notable recent example involved Hotjar, an analytics service, and the popular news website Business Insider. Attackers exploited a combination of OAuth misconfiguration and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, potentially impacting millions of internet users. Specifically, attackers manipulated OAuth login flows, redirecting legitimate authentication tokens to malicious sites, leading to complete account takeovers. This incident underscores how seemingly secure integrations can become gateways to widespread data breaches and compromised accounts.

Due to the complex nature of OAuth implementations, organizations should leverage SSPM platforms to regularly audit OAuth settings, continuously monitor OAuth token usage, and rapidly remediate detected issues to prevent similar attacks.

Real-world threats and the limitations of IAM

Despite IAM’s strength in initial access control, attackers continue to exploit vulnerabilities, such as phishing campaigns targeting high-privilege credentials, insider threats through dormant accounts, and previously mentioned OAuth token attacks. These ongoing threats underline why continuous monitoring provided by SSPM is essential. This emphasizes the critical need for continuous monitoring beyond IAM. 

SSPM platforms detect and respond to these identity threats in real-time by correlating SaaS-specific security signals across applications, providing critical insights that traditional IAM cannot.

It’s not SSPM vs IAM; it’s SSPM and IAM

How IAM and SSPM work together to secure SaaS

IAM and SSPM each play vital roles—but when used alone, each addresses only a subset of the broader SaaS security landscape. IAM is the front-line defense, effectively managing identities and enforcing user access through authentication, authorization, and enforcing least privilege. However, IAM by itself doesn’t address threats occurring after users gain initial access.

SSPM complements IAM by continuously monitoring SaaS environments behind the scenes, catching critical threats that IAM doesn’t see. SSPM tools identify dangerous misconfigurations, risky OAuth tokens, inactive accounts with excessive permissions, and unauthorized integrations (shadow IT). By doing so, SSPM strengthens and extends IAM capabilities, providing ongoing, contextual awareness of SaaS-specific risks.

The following table illustrates the complementary nature of IAM and SSPM, highlighting their individual strengths in securing SaaS environments.

Key features of IAM vs SSPM

Together, IAM and SSPM provide end-to-end visibility and actionable intelligence, ensuring comprehensive protection of your SaaS environment from initial authentication to continuous risk management.

Consider this scenario: An employee clicks on a phishing email, unintentionally providing attackers with OAuth credentials to a SaaS application.

• With IAM alone, the attack may initially go unnoticed, as IAM validates the user credentials without identifying the compromised OAuth token. Attackers exploit this access, quietly escalating privileges or extracting data.
• With IAM integrated with SSPM, the moment the attacker attempts unusual activity—such as accessing sensitive resources or changing configurations—SSPM immediately detects the abnormal OAuth token usage, alerts security teams, and enables rapid remediation before significant damage occurs.

Clearly, IAM and SSPM used together ensures threats are detected and remediated quickly, significantly limiting potential harm.

The future of SaaS security: Integrating IAM and SSPM

Industry analysts emphasize that SaaS security requires more than robust IAM solutions. Gartner and Forrester suggest an integrated approach, combining IAM’s comprehensive identity management capabilities with SSPM’s proactive continuous monitoring, threat detection,  and risk mitigation strategies.

As SaaS ecosystems expand, businesses must adopt solutions that provide complete identity-centric visibility and contextual analysis. Combining IAM and SSPM into a unified strategy ensures comprehensive protection against identity threats, privilege escalation, misconfigurations, and OAuth exploits.

Practical recommendations for enterprises

Given IAM’s inherent limitations, SSPM isn’t merely beneficial, it’s essential for proactively managing SaaS-specific risks that IAM alone cannot detect. It’s not a question of SSPM vs IAM; rather, SSPM and IAM. To simplify your action plan, consider these recommendations organized by urgency and scope:

Immediate actions

• Conduct identity risk assessments: Quickly audit both human and non-human identities, prioritizing the removal of inactive or excessive permissions.
• Perform OAuth security audits: Immediately review OAuth configurations across your SaaS applications to identify and remediate misconfigurations before attackers exploit them.

Ongoing monitoring

• Automate SaaS configuration monitoring: Implement automated alerts to continuously detect SaaS misconfigurations, drift in security posture, and unauthorized changes.
• Regularly review SaaS integrations: Establish governance policies and consistently monitor third-party SaaS integrations, eliminating unnecessary or risky connections.

Strategic initiatives

• Threat modeling and response planning: Regularly conduct scenario-based exercises to anticipate identity-based threats and ensure your incident response leverages both IAM and SSPM effectively.
• Continuous team training: Provide ongoing education for security teams about emerging SaaS risks, identity threats, and best practices for using IAM and SSPM tools.
• Evaluate and integrate security solutions: Periodically assess your IAM and SSPM vendors to confirm they address evolving SaaS security challenges, integrating both solutions into your long-term security strategy from the outset.

Strengthen your SaaS security with AppOmni

AppOmni offers industry-leading SSPM capabilities, providing enterprises with complete visibility and actionable insights into SaaS-specific security risks that IAM solutions can miss. We make it easy to remember that it’s not SSPM vs IAM; it’s SSPM and IAM.

Our platform empowers security teams to:

• Continuously identify and remediate excessive privileges and inactive accounts
• Monitor OAuth tokens and third-party integrations proactively to prevent breaches
• Correlate identity-based threats across your SaaS applications, improving security response efficiency and effectiveness
• Simplify compliance and reduce complexity in managing your entire SaaS security posture

By adopting AppOmni’s comprehensive SSPM platform, your organization can confidently secure its critical SaaS environment—achieving both security and productivity.

Ready to enhance your SaaS security? Request an AppOmni demo.