As the cloud computing market is growing, one particular type of service is rising the most, Software as a Service (SaaS). In fact, a 2016 research by Gartner predicted that the cloud shift rate through 2020 for SaaS (37%) is thrice faster than Platform as a Service (PaaS) and twice faster than Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Perhaps, this is because SaaS is more flexible and cost-effective than other cloud services (5 challenges of Saas implementation).
The rapid rise of SaaS usage should come hand in hand with the security measures and practices, as failures in protecting your data and applications in the cloud will not only cost you financially but also your reputation within the public. A study revealed that the common reasons for data loss are accidental deletion, hackers, malicious insiders, prolonged outages, and data retention policy for audit or compliance purposes (Forrester, 2016).
Here are five best practices to minimize the risk of data loss due to negligence or attacks according to Alien Vault:
- Implement data and application controls to secure your data. This can be done by encrypting your data, which means that your data is shown in codes, not text. Only the person with the right access code can unlock the code. Additionally, enterprises could also employ a data loss prevention (DLP) mechanisms and policies.
- Reinforce identity and access management policies. Make sure that each person within your organization who is given access to your SaaS applications has authentication credentials that are unique. Moreover, ask your employees to create a complex password that should be changed on a regular basis.
- Implement logging and monitoring controls, including authentication and access events, DLP-related events and various other metrics related to SaaS, such as when a user uploads and downloads data a lot more data than usual, or when a user connects from two different geographic locations within an unrealistic time frame
- Evaluate all of your security policies and mechanism. Do penetration test on your SaaS applications and infrastructure on a regular basis, so you could find vulnerabilities within your SaaS applications and infrastructure and could adjust your security measures and practices accordingly.
- Educate the IT security team about SaaS, its use cases, and functionality. Inform them regarding the latest attack trends and train them on how to minimize the risk of getting one.
As one of the IT experts in Indonesia, CTI Group is not only committed in assisting you to chose the right cloud provider or your migration strategies, but also the security measures that are needed with SaaS deployment. By doing so, you could get all the benefits of SaaS without worrying about the security issues that may arise.
