Essential Tips for Safeguarding Your SaaS Business
Software as a service has largely replaced and surpassed the local and often isolated tools we depended on before. It’s unmatched regarding integrations, available 24/7 from anywhere, always up to date, and continuously innovating. Yet, such progress comes with unique challenges and vulnerabilities.
In this article, we explore how you can make your SaaS offerings resilient and establish customer trust.
Incorporate Security from the Start
Not integrating cybersecurity measures into your product from the start of the SDLC is among the crucial mistakes to avoid when building a resilient SaaS application. Integrating threat protection, monitoring, and resistance to common forms of cyberattack as early as the planning stages will ensure you have a healthy foundation to build on. It's easier to expand upon initial safeguards this way and implement new ones since you won't need to make sweeping changes to your product in response to new threat developments.
Establish Stringent Access Controls
The security of any SaaS product depends highly on the effectiveness of your access policies. Customer accounts will outnumber staff and admin by far, and you need to ensure that they only have access to features and privileges associated with their service tiers.
Moreover, there needs to be a strict, monitored hierarchy that enables employees to carry out their duties while preventing them from accessing unauthorized systems and performing insider attacks. Auditing and logging practices need to be in place to track account activity and pinpoint incident origins faster.
Maintain Secure Authentication
Your other efforts will be ineffective if staff and users don't adhere to password best practices. You can't enforce this for users, but you can prompt them to secure their CRM, business communication, streaming, or any other SaaS-based account with unique and complex passwords.
The best way to do this for employees is to set up a business password manager. They’re adept at creating, storing, auto-filling, and even securely sharing account credentials. This speeds up logins while maintaining security. It also allows temporary provisioning and easy privilege termination when an employee takes another role or no longer works at your business.
All crucial accounts also need multi-factor authentication for complete protection. Even unique passwords may become compromised through no fault of their users; the second authentication layer MFA introduces keeps account control in owners’ hands even then.
Responsible Data Handling
SaaS operations necessarily generate and depend on data. From user account details and payment info to usage reports and growth strategies, data is your primary asset and demands appropriate treatment. That means maintaining strong encryption when stored and in transit, access monitoring, regular backups, and data loss prevention measures.
The matter of data sovereignty is also gaining importance. Users are more aware of their data and its (mis)uses by other actors, so it’s no wonder that data removal services like Incogni are thriving. Make your privacy and data collection policies freely available and easy to understand. Moreover, tailor your gathering efforts to collect only necessary data for leaner operations and a smaller attack surface.
API & Vendor Security
APIs enhance your products’ functionality and accessibility, allowing for easy integration and exposure through other services. However, they may also introduce a host of security risks you need to be aware of. Improperly set up APIs can buckle under DDoS attacks or be susceptible to malicious code injection, so security in designing them should take priority.
It’s impossible to do business as a digital-first company without relying on other SaaS vendors for hosting, customer management, marketing, etc. You’ll be entrusting sensitive data to third parties daily, so make sure you properly vet them and outline their security obligations towards you before entering into a partnership.
Regulatory & Legal Compliance
The legal groundwork concerning data handling and related user rights is in place and continues to evolve. Whose data you store and where impacts the safeguards and rights you need to enforce, especially when working with European users due to the GDPR. CCPA, HIPAA, and a slew of new and upcoming regulations mean strong data protection is both necessary and inevitable.
Adhering to data security regulations and obtaining relevant industry certificates is a net positive for everyone. You show legal compliance and have systems that make the data you collect more secure. Meanwhile, you can emphasize your commitment to user security and privacy to attract more customers and establish yourself as a reputable provider.
Conclusion
The always-online, cloud-based nature of SaaS makes product and data security both more essential and more challenging than ever. Being aware of the measures you should be taking and having an incident response plan to deal with worst-case scenarios will go a long way toward establishing you as a competent, trustworthy provider vendor that end users won't hesitate to work with.
