Despite economic uncertainty, organizations are prioritizing SaaS security investments

In this Help Net Security video, Maor Bin, CEO and Co-Founder of Adaptive Shield, discusses the key findings of their recent annual SaaS Security Survey Report, conducted in partnership with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

Seventy percent of organizations have prioritized investment in SaaS security, establishing dedicated SaaS security teams, despite economic uncertainty and workforce reductions.

Additional key findings

SaaS security dedicated teams are established. For the first time, the survey identified the existence of SaaS-specific security roles: 57% of respondents have a SaaS security team of at least two dedicated full-time employees and another 13% have allocated a dedicated full-time employee.

Organizations managed to improve their key SaaS security capabilities. Full visibility into the SaaS stack has nearly doubled since last year, leaving companies in much better positions when it comes to preventing breaches and detecting threats. Seventy percent of organizations report having moderate to full visibility into their SaaS applications.

SaaS security challenges stem from using the wrong tool. Organizations are still struggling to manage misconfigurations, connected apps, and visibility into security risks. The most difficult areas to manage in SaaS security, according to the respondents, are achieving visibility into business-critical apps (73%); tracking and monitoring security risks from third-party connected apps (65%); locating and fixing SaaS misconfigurations (65%); ensuring data governance and privacy (63%); and aligning SaaS application settings with compliance standards (61%). These challenges stem from using tools such as CASB and Manual Audits.

Companies that have adopted SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) are more than twice as likely to have full visibility into their SaaS stack — 62% of these organizations are able to oversee over 75% of their SaaS environment compared to those that utilize other tools and manual processes in their strategy (31%).

Despite challenges, SaaS security investment is paying off. The challenges presented clearly demonstrate that organizations are taking SaaS security seriously. In fact, the survey identified a positive trend: 25% of respondents experienced a SaaS security incident in the past two years, compared with 53% last year. The most common security incidents reported were data breaches (52%) and data leakage (50%), followed by unauthorized access (44%) and malicious applications (38%).