10 SaaS Security Risks Most Organizations Miss

The rise of SaaS has unlocked new ways to move fast, collaborate globally, and modernize business. But it’s also created a sprawling attack surface that most security teams can’t fully see, let alone protect.

So here’s the real question: Do you have the right level of visibility?

If your visibility is limited to apps governed by your SSO or to vendors approved by your procurement team, then the answer is no. Additionally, if your IAM program assumes that accounts are deprovisioned just because a user has left, or that your critical SaaS configurations remain unchanged since you established them six months ago, you’re trusting too much.

Here are ten hidden SaaS security risks that frequently go unnoticed and why they matter more than ever.

1. Shadow SaaS That Slips Through the Cracks

It has never been easier for employees to create new accounts using just an email and a password. SaaS adoption now occurs from the bottom up to meet productivity, convenience, or team-specific needs.

The issue? Much of that usage remains hidden. Security teams depending on CASBs, SWGs, or SSO logs overlook the extensive array of apps initiated by employees and accessed through direct logins or personal devices. According to Grip's data, enterprises underestimate their SaaS footprint by up to 90%.

These unknown apps include unmanaged identities and unidentified data flows, creating gaps in your SaaS security and incident response. Since they are legitimate services, not malware, they rarely trigger alarms, unless you have the appropriate level of visibility and a SaaS security platform to detect them.

2. Shadow Tenants Created by Employees

When employees register for an enterprise SaaS platform using their corporate email, they may unintentionally create a new tenant for that service. This is common with tools like Snowflake, AWS, GitHub, or Oracle Cloud, where a free trial or departmental initiative can generate new account IDs, often designating that employee as the default administrator.

These tenants operate completely outside of IT’s visibility. No centralized controls, no security baselines, no account offboarding. However, your corporate identities remain connected to them, allowing data to flow into them just as easily.

Even the most mature organizations miss this. In one case, a company thought it had a complete inventory of its AWS accounts until Grip identified over ten times that number. These unmonitored tenants weren’t malicious, but created a significant blind spot in the company’s cloud security posture.

Worse, since these tenants weren’t formally onboarded, they seldom get decommissioned either. They linger unmanaged, even after the original creator moves on, leading to long-term exposure.

3. Dormant Accounts and Orphaned Access Still Active

When an employee moves on or changes tools, what happens to the SaaS accounts they leave behind? In too many cases, they remain active.

Research shows that 31% of employees still have access to applications from previous jobs. These orphaned accounts are often unfederated and are not visible in IAM dashboards. Worse yet, some possess elevated privileges.

Attackers don’t have to hack your systems if they can simply log in through forgotten accounts. Dormant accounts are a significant SaaS security risk, and many identity-based breaches start with them.

4. Poor Credential Practices

Not all SaaS apps are federated, and users frequently manage credentials across numerous applications. Many of these are accessed using local credentials, which are often reused across services, shared among teams, or protected by weak or compromised passwords. Even when organizations adopt best practices like password managers or MFA, these measures often don’t extend to shadow SaaS, placing the onus on employees to make good password choices.

The larger issue? Most security teams lack visibility into these practices. They can’t identify which accounts are using shared logins, weak credentials, or compromised passwords. Additionally, there's no automated method to rotate credentials or revoke access when needed. This is where access risk becomes operational risk: users hold the keys, but no one knows where those keys are or who else has copies.

5. Unmanaged Test Accounts and Non-Human Identities

Temporary accounts often end up becoming permanent. In SaaS, those test accounts, service users, and API credentials frequently provide more access than you may realize.

The Midnight Blizzard attack on Microsoft exploited exactly this—a dormant test account that was left unprotected and had no MFA. This is not an isolated incident. Non-human identities and developer-created accounts often bypass governance, are forgotten once the project ends, and remain active with lingering access.

Without the automated discovery and classification of these accounts, they stay invisible and vulnerable.

6. Manual SaaS Inventory Methods  

Many enterprises still rely on user surveys, spreadsheets, or procurement forms to track SaaS usage. That’s not visibility, that’s false hope.

Manual processes are slow, prone to errors, and become outdated immediately after completion. In one case studied by Grip, a large healthcare organization depended on self-reporting to compile its SaaS inventory. The outcome? Dozens of tools were overlooked, with no way to enforce access policies.

You can’t secure what you don’t know exists. When your inventory is incomplete, your SaaS security will also be fundamentally flawed.

7. Compliance Blind Spots Created by Shadow SaaS

Compliance audits typically concentrate on systems within scope: those identified in a formal inventory and known by the organization. However, shadow SaaS and unmanaged accounts operate outside of compliance boundaries.

For regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, and many others, SaaS that accesses sensitive data without the appropriate security measures (such as MFA) constitutes noncompliance. It’s not just a SaaS security risk; it’s an exposure that could lead to fines, reputational damage, and failed audits.

Learn more about HIPAA's 2025 Security Rule Updates

Security teams must demonstrate that access is not only secured appropriately but also revoked when it is no longer necessary, even for unsanctioned SaaS applications.

8. Configuration Drift That Quietly Creates Exposure

SaaS apps don’t stay static. New features are released. Integrations expand. Admins make changes. And over time, the security posture you set months ago can quietly erode.

You might have disabled external file sharing in your cloud storage app or restricted guest invitations on your collaboration platform. However, if new features have been added or a new admin has granted broader permissions, those configurations may no longer apply. Unless you consistently monitor these shifts or have a SSPM platform that alerts you to the changes, you might not realize when a previously secure app becomes vulnerable again.

9. Overpermissioned SaaS and Risky OAuth Scopes

Managing OAuth scopes is challenging, as both users and apps can grant permissions. SaaS apps often ask for more access than they need, and users almost always click “Accept.”

OAuth scopes define what apps can do once authorized. And too often, they’re granted broad, persistent access: email visibility, document sharing permissions, admin-level privileges. Most organizations have no way to monitor, assess, or revoke these scopes at scale. As a result, risky OAuth scopes accumulate silently, waiting to be exploited without triggering alerts.

10. Risky Browser Extensions with Privileged Access

Many SaaS activities take place in the browser, along with various associated risks. Browser extensions can access sensitive information, including session cookies, keystrokes, clipboard data, and browsing history. The concern is not only what these extensions can do, but also how easily users grant them access. With just one click, employees often authorize permissions without fully understanding the implications.

Because most security teams have no visibility into what’s been installed, even well-intentioned tools can quietly become high-risk. Extensions can be hijacked, silently updated, or intentionally designed to exfiltrate data—all without triggering traditional security controls.

Why These SaaS Security Risks Exist in the First Place

All of these hidden SaaS security risks—unseen apps, unmanaged identities, orphaned accounts, misconfigurations, and more—stem from a simple disconnect: SaaS usage has evolved, but security controls haven’t kept pace. Most tools weren’t designed to address the changes brought about by a decentralized, user-driven SaaS environment. Moreover, visibility breaks down across a fragmented stack—IAM platforms overlook browser activity, CASBs lack identity context, and traditional SSPMs offer limited discovery with no insight into unsanctioned apps. These silos create gaps, and attackers are more than willing to exploit the space in between.

Closing your SaaS Security Gaps with Grip

Visibility is the first step in establishing a secure and resilient SaaS security program. It’s not just about knowing which apps have been approved; it’s about understanding what’s actually happening across every app, every tenant, and every identity. That level of insight enables security teams to act decisively, mitigate risks early, and prevent threats from escalating.

Grip is founded on this principle. Unlike isolated tools that only tackle parts of the problem, Grip unifies SaaS discovery, identity intelligence, misconfiguration detection, and threat response, all built on unmatched visibility. It’s the sole solution that addresses the entire SaaS lifecycle, from unsanctioned app signups to offboarding users and accounts, and every SaaS behavior in between.

• Grip SaaS Security Control Plane continuously discovers shadow SaaS and shadow tenants, uncovering the true scope of SaaS usage and surfacing risks that other tools overlook.

• Grip’s browser extension enhances visibility and control of corporate identities, identifying risky behaviors like password reuse, shared credentials, and logins to apps with no MFA or expired accounts. It also helps detect risky browser extensions and uncovers apps that don’t trigger email alerts, which are often the most difficult to detect.

• Grip’s SSPM ensures that critical applications stay properly configured over time, assisting teams in identifying and addressing drift, misaligned permissions, and overly broad OAuth scopes.

• Grip's ITDR Grip detects identity-based threats in real-time—from suspicious access patterns and malicious browser extensions to risky third-party OAuth grants—enabling security teams to respond faster and with contextual understanding and confidence.

These capabilities provide you with continuous and comprehensive visibility across both sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS, enabling you to prioritize what matters, act fast, and close the gaps that attackers exploit.

The bottom line is that you can’t secure what you can’t see, and in SaaS, there’s far more happening than most organizations realize. Grip gives you the visibility, context, and control to finally get ahead of your SaaS security risks.

Ready to see what you’re missing? Discover how Grip gives you the visibility and control to eliminate hidden SaaS risks before they become security incidents. Book a demo now.

‍