The ease with which Software as a Service (SaaS) apps can be deployed and adopted is remarkable, but it has quickly become a double-edged sword. On one hand, the availability of SaaS tools enables employees to work from anywhere. For IT and security teams however, the adoption of SaaS apps has become a daunting curse. Remember when cybersecurity was mostly about firewalls, VPNs and antivirus software? Those days are long gone. Now, one of the most prevalent places for exploitation has to do with misconfigurations found in an organization's SaaS apps.
Eighty-five percent of information security professionals cite SaaS misconfigurations as the third highest risk facing today’s organizations, according to the Adaptive Shield 2021 SaaS Security Survey Report. As businesses rely on an increasing number of SaaS applications, misconfigurations are exacerbated by businesses placing unrealistic expectations on app owners — that is, less-trained employees who sit outside the security department’s day-to-day purview.