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The Flevy Blog covers Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories.
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Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Value Chain (31-slide PowerPoint presentation). An Industry Value Chain is a visual representation of the series of steps an organization in a specific industry takes to deliver a product or service to the market. It captures the main business functions and processes that are involved in delivering the end product or service, illustrating how [read more]
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The Covid-19 pandemic brought about a massive paradigm change in how both employers and employees approached work.
Even though the adoption of SaaS cloud platforms was already on the rise in recent years, due to the coronavirus, many companies ended up accelerating their move to the cloud for greater efficiency and better agility. But data theft and data leak risks are something that you should be aware of if you use such SaaS cloud platforms.
Let’s look at how to minimize data leak risks in SaaS cloud platforms.
Authentication is a verification mechanism used to confirm that a person is actually who they say they are.
Cloud service providers (CSPs) are responsible for verifying a person’s identity in a cloud environment when it comes to cloud platforms. But, the fact remains that many data leakage incidents took place due to vulnerabilities in identity management systems. Even if such vulnerabilities are addressed at the provider end, unauthorized access to authentication information can result in data theft or data leakage.
Suppose you’re a company that depends on SaaS cloud platforms. In that case, you need to minimize access to authentication information so that unauthorized people cannot get access to your internal systems.
With more and more companies moving their applications to the cloud, it is vital to ensure that their services are not affected due to technical problems at the CSP’s end. If you’re one such company, you should consider using a security service that monitors cloud-scale applications.
Such services carry out cloud monitoring, using manual and automated tools to monitor the availability of their cloud-scale applications. You are also notified of any issues that you should be aware of to take preventative action.
One security service you can use is Datadog, whose SaaS platform automates application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and log management to ensure that your cloud-scale applications are working as intended. However, you should also consider alternatives to Datadog, as doing so will help you identify what suits your company’s needs.
Data loss prevention (DLP) is a set of tools and processes companies use to ensure that sensitive data is not misused, lost, or accessed by users who are not authorized to do so.
Cloud-based storage incorporating an appropriate DLP approach can increase data security compared to storing sensitive data on a company’s internal networks. Hence, companies should implement a DLP approach to protect their sensitive customer data and corporate assets.
Consider using this cloud security Kanban Board to ensure that your cloud strategy is in line with industry best practices when it comes to protecting your customer data and corporate assets.
Endpoint protection is a specific cybersecurity approach used to defend endpoints like laptops, desktops, and mobile devices from malicious activity. When endpoint protection first started being used, it was primarily an on-premise tool. However, with advances in technology, cybercrime methods also became more advanced.
In such a scenario, cloud endpoint protection came into being primarily to learn quickly and defend against real-time security threats.
Advanced endpoint protection is critical in protecting systems from file-less, file, zero-day, and script-based threats with the help of behavioral analysis or machine-learning technology. If you have applications that run in SaaS cloud platforms, it is imperative for you to use advanced endpoint protection to protect all endpoints.
Cloud platforms provide convenient access for enterprises and digital businesses. However, they do have certain security risks that you should be aware of. This article has touched upon a few ways to minimize data leak risks in SaaS cloud platforms.
You can download in-depth presentations on SaaS and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.
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