Security & Compliance

  • 6 min read

Uncovering the Hidden Risks of SaaS in Your Organization

Tathagata Chakrabarti

22nd November, 2023

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Employees sign up for SaaS apps to automate their work and improve productivity. But, this unknowingly brings hidden risks that can harm your organization. 

Along with the benefits that come with SaaS, you must also consider the risks SaaS brings to your organization. 

These risks can adversely affect your organisation if they are not actioned on time. 

Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase in SaaS adoption, leading to easy accessibility, scalability, and flexibility.

Despite the benefits, SaaS adoption adds challenges like security risks to IT teams. As more organizations move their data and applications to the cloud, the potential risks of data breaches and cyberattacks increase. 

As a part of the IT team, one of your key responsibilities is to ensure that your organization's SaaS solutions comply with industry security standards and regulations, such as HIPAA or GDPR. In addition, you should have control over the risk levels of apps that are used in your organization. 

But the biggest problem for most IT teams is needing more visibility over the ones that employees have signed up for, also known as unsanctioned apps.  

But why do employees sign up for such apps? Employees use these apps to fill in the gaps where traditional software falls short or simply because they find approved software more complex or challenging to use. 

For example, an employee might use a cloud storage service to store and share files with colleagues rather than using the company's approved file-sharing software.

When employees use unsanctioned SaaS apps, it results in shadow IT, leading to security vulnerabilities, compliance violations, and data breaches.

That being said, SaaS apps, on the whole, need proper monitoring and management to keep security risks in place. Therefore, this article will discuss the hidden risks of using SaaS applications.

3 Hidden Risks of Using SaaS Apps

Let us explore 3 different hidden risks impacting the organization's security posture.

1. Data security risk

Using unsanctioned apps has become increasingly common, posing a significant risk to data security. Unsanctioned apps are third-party applications that are not approved or monitored by an organization's IT department. 

These apps can be easily downloaded and used by employees on their devices without the knowledge or approval of IT admins. While these apps may seem harmless, they can be a major source of data security risks for organizations.

Data security is among the most critical concerns for IT admins in organizations. IT admins manage, monitor, and secure data within their company's IT infrastructure. They must ensure that sensitive data remains confidential, is not exposed to unauthorized parties, and is protected from cyber-attacks.

The unsanctioned apps can lead to data security risks in several ways. Firstly, these apps may not have the necessary security features or protocols to protect sensitive data. This can result in data breaches, where hackers can access confidential information such as passwords, financial data, and customer details. 

Secondly, unsanctioned apps may not be updated regularly, leaving them vulnerable to known security flaws and weaknesses. Hackers can exploit these vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to an organization's data.

The risks associated with unsanctioned apps can have severe consequences for IT admins and organizations. For example, data breaches can result in reputational damage, financial loss, and legal liabilities. 

In addition, IT admins may face challenges in identifying and mitigating these risks, particularly if they are unaware of the unsanctioned apps being used within their organization.

2. Risks from integrating SaaS apps with high-risk apps

With the growing adoption of SaaS applications to optimize business operations, the prevalence of interconnected SaaS apps is also on the rise. While such interconnectivity can bring about higher levels of efficiency and productivity, it can also pose a risk to the security of these apps.

Also, these interconnected apps' data can be compromised if cybercriminals attack any of these apps. This can introduce vulnerabilities in the interconnected ecosystem of SaaS apps, leading to data breaches, compliance violations, and other security risks.

One of the primary risks of interconnected SaaS apps is the potential for data leakage. When SaaS apps are linked together, data can flow between them, making it easy for sensitive information to be inadvertently exposed or accessed by unauthorized parties. For example, this can occur if a third-party app has weak security measures or if data is transmitted without encryption.

Moreover, attackers can exploit vulnerabilities in these third-party apps to gain access to an organization's data or systems. Once they have access, they can move laterally through the interconnected apps, leading to the data compromise of sensitive information, employee information, and intellectual property of all kinds.

3. Compliance violation by unsanctioned apps

One common compliance issue that organizations face is the use of unsanctioned apps. Unsanctioned apps can lead to compliance violations in several ways. 

Firstly, the apps used by an organization's employees may not comply with industry or regulatory standards, exposing the organization to legal or financial penalties. 

Secondly, they may collect or transmit sensitive data without proper encryption or security measures, making them vulnerable to data breaches or cyberattacks. Further, they may violate the organization's own policies regarding data privacy, security, and intellectual property.

The consequences of compliance violations can be severe, not just for the organization but also for IT teams who are responsible for managing and securing the organization's systems and data. 

After learning the various hidden risks of SaaS apps, the important question is how to eliminate these risks. 

To eliminate the hidden risks, it is crucial for IT admins to gain complete visibility into the organization's SaaS landscape. This is where a SaaS management platform can be incredibly valuable. 

With their ability to offer a centralized view of all the SaaS applications used within an organization, these platforms simplify the process of discovering the apps used across different departments. By gaining a clear understanding of the applications in use, the individuals using them, and their usage patterns, IT admins can proactively identify and mitigate any potential risks.

In addition to improving visibility, SaaS management platforms can also help IT teams streamline their SaaS management processes. By automating tasks such as user onboarding, offboarding, and license management, these platforms free up IT resources to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Use a SaaS Management Platform to Eliminate the Hidden Risks

If you're seeking a way to gain comprehensive visibility into your organization's SaaS applications, look no further than Zluri. As a SaaS management platform, Zluri offers insights that allow you to understand and monitor your organization's SaaS application usage at a deeper level.

With Zluri, IT admins can quickly discover all the SaaS apps their employees are using, along with the information on who is using them and how frequently they are being used.

Zluri uses five discovery methods to discover 100% of the SaaS apps in their organizations. These methods include: 

• Single sign-on(SSO) and Identity providers(IDPs): Zluri integrates with your SSO and ID providers, like Google Workspace, Okta, Azure Active Directory, etc., to track app users, their departments, hierarchy, and application type. You can customize the source for user information by visiting 'Your Organization' in Settings.

• Finance & expense management: Zluri uses a discovery method to identify apps that were missed at the SSO and IDP levels. To capture additional apps, it connects with your finance and expense management systems like Quickbooks, Netsuite, Zoho Books, etc. 
  
  Zluri identifies apps purchased by employees with either a corporate or personal card and collects transaction details such as the amount spent and expense date.

• Direct integration through APIs: 

  Zluri connects with 800+ SaaS apps to gather app-level usage insights directly from the source. Integrating with each app takes only 2 minutes and is a one-time setup during onboarding, with the connection happening at the admin level. 
  
  We offer data access levels, license tiers, and access and audit logs with direct integration.

• Desktop agents (optional): Zluri offers a desktop agent as an optional discovery method to track device information, installed apps, and app usage time. The desktop agent collects device-level details such as product ID and hardware information, app sign-in and sign-out times, and all apps running in the background.

• Browser extensions(optional): 

  Zluri's browser extensions run locally within your organization and report browser activities to our server for analysis. Available on Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari, these extensions do not read cookies or browser history. Instead, they collect data on visited websites, including URL, title, and tab open/close timestamps. 

The discovery of SaaS apps through these methods helps IT admins identify 100% of the SaaS apps used inside the organization. 

By discovering all the SaaS apps in use, IT admins can ensure that all the applications are approved and meet the company's security standards. This helps prevent security breaches and ensures the company's IT budget is allocated efficiently.

Once the complete SaaS landscape is discovered, now the question arises of how Zluri helps in eliminating the hidden risks. Let's see how it does.

Zluri's real-time SaaS usage tracking provides security and compliance information solutions, including events, statistics, shared data, and compliance and security probes for SaaS applications. The goal is to eliminate the hidden risks that will secure the organization's SaaS environment.

The security and compliance information for each SaaS app helps the IT admin to understand the app's threat level, risk score, risk level and manually mark the app as high risk, medium risk, or low risk.

The threat level is determined by the type of data that an app shares with the SSO. For instance, if an app has access to Google Drive and can delete or modify drive files, it poses a high threat level.

Further, with the above information, IT admins can decide which apps to identify as critical, depending on the security risk. Zluri sends timely alerts to users, warning them against using these apps that can compromise data confidentiality and leave the organization vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

In addition, Zluri helps you stay compliant with various industry security and privacy standards, such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and more. With these compliance enforcement frameworks in place, your organization is protected against internal and external threats, ensuring that your SaaS apps remain secure.

Once the complete SaaS landscape is discovered, Zluri empowers IT teams to make informed decisions on SaaS apps and segregate them into managed, unmanaged, restricted, and needs review.

Now, the IT admin can secure the organization's SaaS environment with our SaaS management platform. Book a Demo today!

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.