Procurement

  • 5 min read

Things to Consider Before Choosing a Secure SaaS Vendor

Tathagata Chakrabarti

5th February, 2024

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Due to increased SaaS adoption, security and compliance risks are significant business concerns. Therefore, choosing an appropriate SaaS vendor with the proper security measures helps organizational growth. 

But how to select a secure SaaS vendor? Considering a few points before choosing a SaaS vendor can help eliminate the potential security risks.

Post-pandemic businesses shifted from on-premises to SaaS applications. Due to its easy accessibility, employees are adopting SaaS applications. SaaS has the potential to change the operations of an organization efficiently. It helps automate and integrate business processes. Further, provides employees with a broader choice of tools to increase productivity. 

Multiple SaaS vendors offer SaaS applications, so choosing the appropriate SaaS vendor for your organization has become complex. Additionally, security adds challenges in selecting the SaaS vendor. As businesses have to ensure the SaaS vendor is compliant and meets the standard security framework 

Businesses must look at the primary criteria for security and ensure that SaaS vendors meet suitable security measures. As such, the SaaS vendors will have access to critical information about the business processes. 

Therefore, you need to consider the security factors such as data breaches, non-compliance, etc., to eliminate the risks associated with SaaS applications.

In this article, we will walk you through the checklist before choosing a secure SaaS vendor for your organization.

Checklist For Choosing a Secure SaaS Vendor

Before selecting a secure SaaS vendor for your organization, let us discuss what you should consider.

1. Verify vendor's alignment with security frameworks and certifications in place

A SaaS vendor can demonstrate compliance certification and alignment with the security framework, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, GDPR, and more. In addition, it helps the organization gain trust that vendors have robust security practices in place.

Compliance guidelines depend on various regulatory bodies specific to the industry or geographical regions. For example, a health-related company using SaaS apps must comply with the HIPAA framework. This framework will ensure that personal data related to health will remain secure.

So before purchasing any SaaS product, the organization must ensure that the vendor complies with the required standards or regulations and avoid security and compliance risk.

SaaS vendors can provide the business with self-assessment or independent audit reports to certify their compliance. This compliance report helps you gain accurate information regarding the compliance regulations followed by SaaS vendors.

You should choose SaaS vendors who comply with industry standards and align their business with the required security framework. Frameworks and standards help sort vendors' lists and mitigate security risks.

Further, ensure that the SaaS vendor has the required compliance certifications in place. This will help you stay compliant and make your organization audit ready.

2. Check for vendor's security policies and the practices they follow

Organizations need to check vendors' security policies before choosing a SaaS vendor to ensure they meet the business security requirements. When businesses use SaaS apps, the data associated with them is accessible to the SaaS vendors. This brings security and privacy concerns that require planning. 

Data security is a crucial aspect of SaaS security checklists. You must ensure that the database and SaaS apps are protected from cyberattacks and data breaches. SaaS vendors' security policies can ensure the safety of the business from any potential risks. 

Moreover, access control is an essential component of data security. It can work efficiently only when authorized employees get access to the sensitive data with proper precaution, which ensures the safety of data and the organization. 

On the other hand, if organizations come across unauthorized access, then it can lead to sensitive data loss. This will impact the reputation of the organization. For this reason, SaaS vendors must follow best practices to meet their security policies, like providing practical solutions to retrieve lost data, restrict access, etc. This will help the businesses trust the vendor's security policies. 

Additionally, reliable SaaS vendors practice periodic security audits to evaluate their security policies and improve their practices accordingly. 

3. Review the SaaS vendor's third-party security

Data breach has become an everyday activity in the SaaS world. In a decentralized organization, using SaaS apps can lead to security and compliance risks such as data breaches, cyberattacks, etc.. Still, the primary reason that leads to data breaches is SaaS vendors' third-party security risks. 

Businesses must ensure that SaaS vendors take precautionary measures to avoid any security risks. Before choosing a SaaS vendor for your organization, you should review the SaaS vendor's third-party security to prevent any data breaches, especially those that will have access to your company's sensitive information. 

A SaaS vendor's primary responsibility is to protect their client's sensitive information. But several vendors need to follow the basic rules, and violating these rules can give rise to security data breach incidents and risks. 

To be secure and choose the appropriate SaaS vendor, select the vendor who will ensure the security of the third-party partners. These partners are crucial to businesses as they will have access to your organization's sensitive information, which can lead to data breaches due to mismanagement.

4. Ask for the vendor's backup plan to run the business smoothly

In today's SaaS environment, cybercriminals are getting active. They can break any authentication system to access sensitive information as needed. Incidents like malicious activities, cyberattacks, ransomware attacks, phishing, etc., can occur anytime in the business. 

For this reason, a backup plan is required. No matter how strong the security policies are, they can have loopholes. Cyber attackers take advantage of these loopholes and access the organization's critical information in an unauthorized manner. This can lead to phishing, ransomware, and more. 

While selecting a SaaS vendor, you should understand the vendor's backup plan for incident management and help your business run smoothly. This will ensure the security of your data and eliminate any mishandling of data. Also, it will empower your IT team to focus on IT tasks to maximize the overall ROI.

Moreover, SaaS apps help to improve business productivity and continue business operations. Any hurdles can impact your business and reduce your earnings. To ensure your business continues to operate smoothly, your SaaS vendor must be ready with a backup plan if any incident occurs, even after being cautious with the security policies.

Zluri Helps You Select an Appropriate Secure SaaS Vendor

Zluri offers a SaaS buying service that helps you procure SaaS apps and choose the appropriate vendor. We help you negotiate with the proper SaaS vendor and save you time. Zluri works as an extended company member using your email credentials to contact the vendor. This gives a better understanding of negotiations and maintains a transparent relationship. 

We have a billion SaaS transactions that help you select the vendor suitable for your organization and provide you with better deals. This transaction data support ensures that your data remains secure and compliant. It helps you eliminate the security risks like cyberattacks, ransomware, phishing, and more. We take care of things that need to be considered before selecting a vendor to make the SaaS buying process hassle-free. 

Moreover, Zluri has SaaS buying experts who have made the SaaS vendor selection seamless. It involves factors like security framework certifications, vendor's security policies, etc., that must be considered before the vendor selection process. This will make sure that you choose a secure vendor. 

With Zluri, you can get the information associated with security for all the SaaS apps and can manage the vendors. In addition, this information will help you to stay updated with security framework certifications and security policies of the SaaS vendors. 

If you want to select a secure vendor, how is Zluri helping and 'book a demo.'

About the author

Tathagata Chakrabarti

Tathagata is a Technical Content Writer with 4+ of experience in the SaaS industry. He has a keen eye for research and understanding macro trends in the SaaS & AI-based technology space. He has worked across several marketing & strategy roles in various domains like banking, e-commerce, and education sectors. In his leisure time, Tathagata is a full-time PC gamer.