Are You Using the Right SSPM Technology?

When SSPM tools first entered the market, they addressed an urgent and growing need: identifying risky misconfigurations before attackers did. SSPMs ensure critical SaaS platforms, such as Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Microsoft 365, are configured correctly, highlighting policy violations and helping to ensure compliance with industry standards.

And they delivered on that promise, to some degree.

SSPMs focus on sanctioned applications, those that pass through formal procurement and security reviews and have IT oversight. SSPM platforms provide valuable insights into application usage, user privileges, security controls, third-party integrations, and the potential impact on an organization’s security. For many security teams, SSPMs brought much-needed structure and time savings for protecting sensitive data and securing essential SaaS applications.

But SaaS continued to grow, and so did the risks. However, some SSPM tools couldn't keep up with the changes. That’s why it's important to choose the right SSPM technology that will evolve with your organization and adapt to shifts in your SaaS environment.  

What to Look for in an SSPM

Theoretically, applications managed by an SSPM—Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Zoom, Salesforce, etc., all of which have undergone procurement and security reviews—should be the most secure part of your SaaS stack. But in practice, they’re not immune to risk.

Even in approved apps, security posture can degrade over time. SaaS misconfigurations are rarely dramatic or obvious. All it takes is a missed setting, an overlooked admin account, or a poorly scoped integration token to open the door to a breach. Attackers aren’t looking for zero-days—they’re looking for over-permissioned apps, inconsistent controls, and forgotten tenants. Unfortunately, traditional SSPMs miss most of these; visibility is fragmented, and coverage is limited to the sanctioned, known SaaS apps.

But as we all know, business is not static, and employees continuously push the boundaries. That’s why a modern SSPM, such as Grip SSPM, is essential for mitigating risk in critical SaaS applications. What’s the difference?

Modern SSPMs can:

• Correlate posture, identity, and threat activity to provide a complete, connected view of SaaS risk, unifying configuration insights, access visibility, and behavioral anomalies like risky OAuth connections or suspicious activity.

• Flag configuration drift as it happens, whether triggered by new features, patch updates, or changes made by different admins.

• Continuously monitor and detect risks in real time across critical SaaS applications.

• Identify risky OAuth grants and third-party integrations that may extend access in unintended or insecure ways.

• Detect rogue or unsanctioned tenants of enterprise apps, such as additional Snowflake, Zoom, or Google Workspace instances created outside IT governance.

• Prioritize issues and guide remediation, automatically notifying the right stakeholders and providing clear, actionable steps to resolve the most critical risks first.

• Track program effectiveness over time, helping security teams measure progress and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders.

• Deliver clear reports and dashboards, offering centralized, real-time views of SaaS posture to support both operational response and strategic oversight.

SaaS risk arises not only from new or unknown tools but also from well-known, trusted platforms that evolve faster than your security policies can adapt. Modern SSPMs ensure these critical systems remain aligned with your standards, even as they are adjusted behind the scenes.

Ensuring You Don’t Outgrow Your SSPM

One of the biggest risks with security tools today isn’t failure—it’s stagnation. SaaS environments are evolving rapidly. If your SSPM doesn’t adapt alongside them, it turns into a bottleneck and a false sense of security instead of a reliable safeguard.

Many SSPMs treat discovery as an add-on feature rather than a foundational capability. Additionally, they may surface usage data but leave the heavy lifting—evaluation, remediation, policy enforcement—to the security team. And they rarely offer the integrations needed to close the loop with existing security tools and processes.

The right SSPM should serve as an extension of your broader security program, growing with your organization and enhancing the value of existing security investments. This means:

• Native integrations with IAM, IdP, IGA, and other tools to eliminate silos and manual work.

• Broad and flexible SaaS integrations, to ensure that the SaaS your business relies on the most is protected.

• Support for emerging SaaS categories, including AI tools and consumer-grade apps that are becoming enterprise-critical.

• A roadmap that matches your pace, with continuous platform updates to address new threats, app types, and operational models.

• An agile and flexible SSPM company, willing to listen to your requests, work with you, and committed to your success.

You shouldn’t have to “upgrade” your SSPM to keep up with SaaS growth; your platform should advance with you.

The Bigger Picture: Managing the SaaS Lifecycle

It’s tempting to treat SaaS misconfigurations as isolated problems to solve, but they’re one piece of a much broader security equation.  

Modern SaaS security manages the entire SaaS lifecycle, from adoption to offboarding, with visibility and control at every stage. That’s where a well-designed SSPM proves its value, not by focusing on one moment in time, but by supporting the full lifecycle:

• Discovery of both sanctioned and unsanctioned tenants, so nothing flies under the radar.

• Risk assessment of new applications and users, before onboarding introduces unnecessary exposure.  

• Posture management across essential SaaS apps, keeping configurations aligned with policy. See the applications Grip integrates with.

• SaaS governance, such as enforcing MFA and SSO, improving credential hygiene, and automating identity security controls.

• Account offboarding, including removing access to unauthorized and risky accounts and offboarding users when they leave or change roles.

Without lifecycle-wide coverage, you’re not truly reducing risk; you’re just documenting it.

SaaS isn’t slowing down. Neither are the threats. If your SSPM can’t keep up—can’t discover, analyze, and respond across your full SaaS ecosystem—then it’s not just a missed opportunity. It’s a security gap.

The right SSPM should make SaaS security simpler, smarter, and scalable, not harder. If it doesn’t, it’s time to find one that does.

Take the next step in your SSPM evaluation

Schedule a demo to experience Grip’s SSPM

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