SaaS Security Posture Starts with Grip

SSPM and Securing Identity Fabric

As businesses continue to rely on SaaS applications to operate efficiently, it's crucial to implement robust security measures to protect sensitive information and data. In this article, we will explore the benefits of SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) as a critical layer in your identity fabric. We will also discuss how it can help you better manage your SaaS environment while enhancing security for any identity, whenever and wherever SaaS is used.

What is an Identity Fabric?

The identity fabric is the outcomes of identity sprawl and the relationships between identities and online resources, like SaaS apps. Conceptualizing identities as a fabric is an emerging approach to managing identity in the enterprise, especially with the increased changes to modern work. Securing the identity fabric consists of unifying visibility and relevant insights based on real-world observations of how identities are consumed by SaaS (and vice versa). Identity fabrics are becoming increasingly popular in enterprise environments due to the need for improved identity security and the rising complexity of identity management.

As part of the broader architectural shift toward cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA), the identity control fabric depends on the assembly of observations directly from identity-SaaS interactions and activity. CSMA allows for an identity-based approach to security and protection, infusing security into the identity control fabric to combat the increase in security complexity by adapting security systems to be more integrated, focusing on centralized administration and decentralized policy enforcement — delivered through identities.

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What is SaaS Security Posture Management?

SaaS security posture is becoming more important for modern security because organizations are relying more and more on SaaS applications for everything from sales, marketing, and finance. Understanding whether a system is prepared to mitigate attacks is critical to each organization’s security and compliance standards.

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) is a set of tools and techniques designed to help organizations manage the security posture of their SaaS applications. SSPM enables organizations to monitor and assess their SaaS applications' security, identify potential vulnerabilities, and take the necessary actions to address them. SSPM includes a range of features, such as user activity monitoring, identity and access management, and security analytics.

Why is SSPM a critical layer in your identity fabric?

SSPM is a critical layer in your identity fabric because it helps you manage and secure your SaaS environment, which is an environment packed with corporate identities — past, present, and future. By monitoring user activity and identifying potential risks, Grip enables you to take proactive measures to prevent security breaches. It also helps you maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, and NYDFS. SSPM provides you with comprehensive visibility into your SaaS environment, enabling you to identify security risks before they become critical issues.

Benefits of SSPM:

1. Enhanced security: SSPM helps you secure your SaaS environment by identifying potential security risks and taking necessary actions to address them. It helps you maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards.

2. Increased visibility: SSPM provides you with comprehensive visibility into your SaaS environment, enabling you to monitor user activity and identify potential security risks.

3. Cost savings: SSPM helps you save costs by identifying and addressing security risks before they become critical issues. It also enables you to optimize your SaaS environment by identifying underutilized licenses and applications.

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Using Grip for SaaS and Identity Security

Grip works by providing you with a set of tools and techniques to monitor and manage the security posture of identities and SaaS capabilities within your enterprise environment. These tools include identity and SaaS discovery, graphing, and monitoring, along with identity and access management features to orchestrate policies, and continuous security analytics to maintain line-of-sight to all identities in SaaS relationships. Grip enables you to achieve more across several identity-SaaS security use cases.

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Grip for SaaS and Identity Security, Use Cases

1. Monitor user activity: Grip helps you monitor user activity in your SaaS environment — identity first. Every day, employees are using SaaS and creating a new, dynamic identity perimeter — the enterprise identity fabric — and it is the top target of attackers. This creates an identity sprawl problem that is growing bigger every day.This enables security teams to identify potential security risks and take the necessary actions to address them, such as offboarding users, annihilating passwords, or severing the SaaS connection altogether. Grip maps risks that matter by keep track of all identities in SaaS relationships, flagging control gaps, and providing real-time factors to configure SaaS for optimizing identity and control protection.

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2. Manage identities and access: Grip manages identities and their access in SaaS tools ranging from modern work SaaS to production and security SaaS, and even extending to see which SaaS assets are abandoned or host to zombie accounts. Grip empowers security and identity teams with the full picture of how identities utilize SaaS services, from the first interaction to the present day, including uncovering which critical capabilities or data assets are exposed before they become exploited. Grip enables security teams to schedule offboarding for unsanctioned or risky SaaS, along with instantly annihilating weak and compromised credentials or fully remove an identity’s access based on changes to the individual’s role (e.g., revoking access for former employees or for persons who change roles within the organization).

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3. Analyze and act on security issues: Grip provides each customer with tailored security analytics to help identify relevant and actionable security risks, and orchestrating controls and actions directly from Grip or through controls existing within the enterprise security stack (i.e., integrations, APIs, and commands). take proactive measures to prevent security breaches, and rapid response to SaaS and identity-related security incidents. Prioritize risk for any identity in real-time based on access and usage of SaaS apps — past, present, and future. As identities use SaaS services, Grip tracks sign-in activity from SSO-enabled apps, credentials, and password managers affiliated with identity-SaaS pairs. Additionally, Grip enables security teams to schedule offboarding for unsanctioned or risky SaaS, along with instantly annihilating weak and compromised credentials or fully remove an identity’s access based on changes to the individual’s role (e.g., revoking access for former employees or for persons who change roles within the organization).

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Conclusion

Implementing SaaS security for the entire identity fabric can be difficult, but is critical layer for securing today’s modern work, SaaS-driven enterprise. By discovering identity-SaaS relationships, monitoring activity, managing access controls, and integrating actions, Grip enables you to pinpoint SaaS and identity risks and take action to keep SaaS safe for all, whenever and wherever SaaS and identities collide.  

Learn more about how Grip can help you better manage your SaaS environment and keep identities safe anywhere and everywhere.  

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Get started with Grip's Zero-touch Identity Risk Discovery

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