What is SSPM - SaaS Security Posture Management?
SaaS Security Posture Management, or SSPM, is an effective solution to the challenges of securing SaaS environments. SaaS applications are dynamic by design, which can introduce security risks that aren’t addressed by traditional security solutions. Traditional security solutions and SaaS Security Posture Management are compared below.
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A Guide to SaaS Security
Traditional Security vs SSPM
Limitations of Existing Solutions
Network security focuses on securing the perimeter and protecting internal resources from external threats. CASBs, one of the most common SaaS security recommendations, were designed to expand that perimeter and broker access to the cloud.
But SaaS apps have grown into complex platforms with an unlimited number of access points outside the network, beyond the perimeter. Access may be requested by external users, partners, and 3rd party applications.
While traditional security can inspect network traffic that flows through the proxy/access gateway, CASBs lack visibility into traffic that bypasses the proxy and connects directly into the SaaS environment.
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SSPM
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) builds on the strengths of existing solutions like CASBs and incorporates features found in other point solutions, such as compliance and data security software.
SSPM keeps pace with the speed of change in SaaS environments, constantly monitoring and recommending security configurations to match best practices and your business intent. SSPM also satisfies the unique requirements that come with each internal stakeholder’s security responsibilities.
SaaS Security Posture Management discovers security threats; protects SaaS environments from unnecessary risks; continuously monitors applications for drift from established security baselines; and helps ensure organizations adhere to compliance standards.
SaaS Security Posture Management Matrix
Key elements and responsibilities for different stakeholders are highlighted in the matrix below.
SaaS Security Posture Management Categories
SaaS Risk Identification and Management
Manage and understand the security posture of your SaaS applications in one comprehensive and consolidated view. Automatically detect deviations from best practices in posture policy and apply new, predefined security baselines to ensure uniform security posture.
SaaS Security Monitoring and Detection
Continuously monitor for abnormal or inappropriate activity such as suspicious logins, brute force attempts, and overprivileged user access. SSPM aligns with MITRE ATT&CK or predefined custom runbooks, allowing security teams to quickly understand the situation and prioritize responses.
Software DevSecOps
Always-on security enables organizations to create custom policies that automatically scan development environments at each stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and identify issues on a continuous basis. Specifically, security and data permission configuration drift should be identified prior to pushing preliminary builds into production.
Automated Remediation Workflow
Automatically aggregate and normalize SaaS activity events, check logs against built-in detection scenarios, and receive high fidelity alerts to SOC tooling when deviations from application-specific settings occur.
Continuous Compliance
Maintain compliance by continuously monitoring your SaaS applications with out-of-the-box configuration to control mappings for SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, and more.
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