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Worried about SaaS misconfigurations?Check these 5 settings

Businesses rely on SaaS applications for countless features, such as collaboration, marketing, file sharing, and more. But, problematically, they often lack the resources to configure those applications to prevent cyberattacks, data exfiltration, and other risks.

Catastrophic and costly data breaches are the result of SaaS security misconfigurations. Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report found that bugs are the second leading cause of data breaches, accounting for about one in three breaches. Of these, misconfigurations are by far the most common, often resulting in the exposure of databases or file system content directly to a cloud service.
Enterprises tend to be only as vulnerable as the weaker security configurations they have enabled for their SaaS applications. To illustrate, the Adaptive Shield team has uncovered SaaS misconfigurations that leave companies open to corporate espionage with a single click, exposing their entire cloud.

IT security teams need to do more to protect their organizations from risks caused by misconfigured SaaS applications. Here are five SaaS configuration errors that we see all the time that you should check and fix as needed:

Ensure that your SaaS system administrators use MFA, even if SSO is enabled.
SSO has become a key feature for securing access to SaaS applications; However, there are still some users who may, by design, bypass this control. For maintenance purposes, most SaaS providers allow system owners to log in with their username and password, even if SSO is enabled. Make sure that mandatory multi-factor authentication is enabled for these super users. If your administrators trust the username and passwords, and an administrator’s credentials are compromised, attackers will be able to access the account.
Shared mailboxes are easy dishes, appreciated by Cybercriminals. Fix yours.
Many businesses use shared mailboxes for financial, customer, and other information. We found that organizations have one shared mailbox for every 20 employees on average. These present problems because they do not have a clear owner and each user has a password, which is static because no one changes it. The problems are so severe that Microsoft even recommends blocking sign-in for shared mailbox accounts.
Manage external users with access to internal information.
Today, many companies exchange information using collaboration tools. While external sharing is a great way to extend your organization to your vendors and partners, it comes with the risk of losing control over your data. Be sure to define a collaboration policy with external users and set appropriate limitations on all SaaS applications.
You don’t know what you can’t see; Enable auditing to maximize visibility and control.
As a security expert, you need to know the information you’re missing. While the default audited actions are sufficient for some organizations, for others, it can be a major security breach. Make sure you understand what you’re not seeing and optimize for gaps.
Ensure that no data entity is accessible anonymously without your knowledge.
Maintaining full control over your corporate data is not an easy task. And it only gets harder as you add SaaS applications.