Why 3rd Party SaaS Protection Is on the Rise

Third-party SaaS protection solutions are becoming an increasingly essential component of a business’s public cloud stack due to the growing reliance on cloud-based software applications and the need to protect sensitive data stored in these applications. With the increasing adoption of SaaS applications like Microsoft’s Office 365 suite.

SaaS protection & shared responsibility

The amount of data stored in the cloud has grown significantly, making it crucial to have a robust backup and recovery solution in place to protect against data loss or breaches. Additionally, many businesses are also looking to meet compliance and regulatory requirements, which SaaS Protection can help with. As a result, SaaS Protection has become a vital aspect of a business’s overall IT strategy, ensuring that their data is protected and secure, and that they follow industry standards.

It has been found in an ESG market survey that a sizeable portion of the market, approximately 35%, mistakenly believes that their SaaS vendor is fully responsible for data protection and recovery, when it is the responsibility of the organisation (you) to ensure their data is protected and recoverable.

The shared responsibility models of SaaS vendors such as Microsoft, clearly outline that while they are responsible for the availability of the service, it is the responsibility of the organization (You) to ensure that their data is protected and recoverable, with only around 13% of Businesses fully understanding that SaaS protection is the responsibility of the organization itself from the same survey.

The Shared Responsibility Model is a security framework that defines the responsibilities of cloud service providers (CSPs) and their customers in protecting cloud infrastructure, applications, and data.

In this model, CSPs are responsible for securing the underlying cloud infrastructure, such as the physical servers, storage, and networking, as well as the software and services provided by the cloud platform, such as virtual machines, databases, and load balancers.

In this instance below is a depiction of the shared responsibility model with SaaS solutions, showing both provider and customer responsibilities.

What are some benefits of a third-party SaaS protection solution?

Advanced data protection

While Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce do offer limited cloud-based data storage with the ability to recover deleted data within a certain time frame, these natives restore options have limitations and may not guarantee full recovery of your data.

Remember SaaS applications are focused on increasing productivity, not providing data recovery capabilities. 3rd party SaaS protection solutions typically offer more advanced data protection features than those provided by SaaS vendors, such as automated backups, advanced recovery options, and encryption.

Compliance & legal obligations

Businesses can face severe financial penalties if they are unable to provide data stored in SaaS platforms during legal proceedings or discovery requests. Legal teams need quick access to relevant user data, which is now typically located on employees’ devices and stored in cloud services like Microsoft 365. However, this data may not be easily recoverable using native backup methods and may be vulnerable to deletion or mishandling during the litigation process.

A long with this compliance: Third-party solutions can also help companies to meet compliance requirements related to data protection, such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR.

Cyber attacks on the rise

Many companies using SaaS platforms do not realize that they are just as vulnerable to data loss as traditional systems. With increasing cyber-attacks, organizations are often unprepared for a potential attack. You can learn more about this is our article where we answer ‘how secure is cloud computing?‘.

To protect backup data from threats, it is important to use a third-party data protection solution that includes unchangeable backups, prevention of deletion, and a malware-resistant design. Implementing a zero-trust access policy and having rapid detection and automated response can also help strengthen defence strategies and improve recovery time.

Additionally, a strong solution should allow for scanning snapshots after an attack before restoring data to further reduce the risk of reinfection.

Summary

In summary as organisations mature and are educated correctly on just who’s responsibility SaaS data is and the importance of security around this, we will see 3rd party SaaS protection solutions rising to the very top of organisations list.

It is imperative that companies have awareness around the potential implications around not moving forward with a 3rd party SaaS protection solution in order to be proactive and get ahead of the curve on the matters that are becoming ever more present in todays SaaS centric workplace.

If you would like to discuss SaaS protection in more detail talk to one of our experts and they will work with you to ensure that you are getting the best solution for your business needs. Or visit our page on SaaS Protection for more information.