What is SaaS Cloud Security and What Are SaaS Security Best Practices?

Software-as-a-service or SaaS has taken the business world by storm. With enormous benefits and features, it is no surprise that the SaaS industry has increased by 500% over the past seven years only. However, like any other technology, it carries a significant risk of data breaches.

Do you know that encryption worries are the biggest SaaS-related security concerns for businesses?

Thanks to powerful tools, international SaaS security guidelines, and the technical expertise of SaaS professionals, SaaS cloud security has emerged as the ideal wall of defense against such attacks.

Below, learn all about SaaS cloud security, followed by some best practices. Let us start with an in-depth understanding of SaaS, cloud, and SaaS security.

What is SaaS? What is the Cloud?

Cloud technology emerged as the perfect solution to handle IT needs of different businesses. Cloud storage eliminates the need for dedicated hardware and other technical requirements when software needs to be deployed.

Cloud computing technology is made up of the different data centers located globally. All the databases and software run on these data centers, collectively termed cloud technology.

The different types of clouds include:

Public cloud: A public cloud is not owned by any single end-user. Some of the examples of public clouds are Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), etc.

Private cloud: A private cloud is dedicated to a single customer with complete isolated access. Some of its examples are Microsoft, HP data centers, etc.

Hybrid cloud: A hybrid cloud combines a public cloud and a private cloud.

Multi-cloud: A multi-cloud combines cloud services with multiple service providers and multiple cloud vendors.

SaaS stands for software-as-a-service. SaaS comes from a series of cloud services with multiple counterparts. This allows users to access different apps from anywhere and on any device through the internet.

The Key Benefits of SaaS Technology:

• Accessing sophisticated applications

• Accessing free client software

• Accessing data all over the world

• Paying only for used services

A SaaS service provider covers all the maintenance, updates, and security management of the servers.

What is SaaS Security?

SaaS security is the process of safeguarding, monitoring, and managing sensitive data from different cyberattacks. While SaaS technology is gaining global momentum, the scalability and flexibility of SaaS are making businesses vulnerable like never before.

SaaS cloud security has a few different layers. The three layers of SaaS security architecture include:

Server-side infrastructure

• Server-side infrastructure handles the internal exchange of information. All clouds need to secure every point of information exchange between the software platform and cloud storage provider. Different cloud servers like shared, dedicated, and individual servers should be optimized to meet or exceed various SaaS security standards.

Network

• Networking or the internet is one of the most vulnerable layers of SaaS data exchange. It is easy to create a back-door entry through a weak encryption of data exchanged over the internet in data packets. Therefore, network security measures are crucial, especially when a large set of information is exchanged on digital payments and KYC platforms.

Client-side application and software

• SaaS users need applications and software to start using the services. Hence, it is essential to add a final layer of security to the client-side applications and software to protect the user and business data.

SaaS Security Best Practices

Any business can implement cloud security best practices. It is impossible to get the optimized benefits of SaaS without implementing all of these standards (though it is not recommended). The major SaaS security standards are:

• Real-time vulnerability monitoring
• Educating customers
• Training employees
• Strong data encryption
• SaaS security posture management
• Cloud access security broker (CASB)
• Optimal access levels to users

Wrapping Up

SaaS cloud security boils down to preventing data breaches. With a detailed understanding of SaaS and the cloud, it becomes easy for businesses to understand the value of SaaS security.

The importance of SaaS security is equivalent to securing the most valuable asset in our business.