Security is undoubtedly crucial for a company’s operations. However, while internal protection matters greatly, gaps in SaaS security can ruin a business. Offering a SaaS platform to clients without sufficiently protecting their data is simply not acceptable for a company. This is why today we want to talk about SaaS security standards for 2025 and how to match them.
What is SaaS Security?
It’s the act of securing SaaS applications through a combination of active and passive practices. This can include a multi-layer authentication setup, continuous monitoring, or data isolation methods. What matters is the end result — keeping each client’s data secure and independent of others, with minimal chance of attackers gaining access to it or control over it.
So, in short, SaaS security is everything you do as a business to keep sensitive information and operations safe. Let’s learn how to secure SaaS applications, starting with the troubles you may face.
Common Security Challenges in SaaS Platforms
While each company is unique, experts agree that SaaS platforms tend to have the same general risks. Most of these specifically endanger user data, but it’s obviously the vendor’s job to protect their clients. Here’s what you’re up against with SaaS security problems.
Vulnerabilities in Multi-Tenant Environments
Hosting a multi-tenant platform creates the need to keep their data both secure from external threats and isolated from each other. Running just one database for everyone does not exactly follow SaaS security best practices and creates the risk of data contamination or privacy breaches.
Unauthorized Access
Be it through phishing, rogue employees, or leaks on the clients’ part, unauthorized access to the SaaS platform is one of the most prominent attack vectors in SaaS security. Educating clients about login security and preventing unauthorized entry into their database is vital.
SaaS Integration
While integrating other applications through API connections is important, it should be done in line with SaaS best practices. An attacker could use a faulty API to gain access to the SaaS platform, so it’s important to focus on patching those gaps.
Vendor Dependency
A customer using a SaaS platform puts their security in the vendor’s hands. That requires trust. Any SaaS security breach could ruin that trust, so it’s vital to keep up with best practices at all times. Besides, it’s also important to showcase exactly what measures are in place to protect customer data.
| Challenge | Attack vector |
|---|---|
| Multi-tenant environments | Improper data isolation |
| Unauthorized access | Phishing, lack of authentication methods |
| Integrations | Faulty APIs and improper integration |
| Vendor dependency | Poor vendor security |
Case Study: Real-Life SaaS Security Breach
To better understand SaaS security requirements and why security issues are treated with such gravity, let’s look at an actual case of a SaaS breach. You’ll see the potential effects of flawed security practices.
Background of the Incident
As expert reports show, employees frequently share data and companies often leave resources unused and unmonitored. Both of these are relevant to our SaaS security example, the breach at Sitel, a service affiliated with Okta.
Right away, you can probably tell that attackers here acted smart - instead of going for Okta itself, they targeted their partners with a lower profile and less security. This allowed them to gain access.
Breach Impact and Recovery Efforts
First, the attackers lucked out with Sitel not storing credentials properly, as login info was left in plaintext. This is a severe violation of SaaS best practices and allowed attackers in-depth access to the company. They established fake Microsoft 365 accounts and granted themselves admin privileges.
From there, it was just a matter of setting up ways to continuously spy on the company, which the attackers did with ease. They changed email forwarding rules to enable further spying. Overall, the attack lasted just 25 minutes and ended successfully. Okta then had to do major damage control and reach out to anyone who could have been affected.
Lessons Learned and How to Prevent Similar Breaches
If you care about SaaS security, forget about plaintext when it comes to data storage. Sitel and Okta would have avoided this problem entirely if data hadn’t been so readily available to attackers.
SaaS Security Best Practices for 2025
Now that we’ve talked about threats and breaches let’s discuss how to beef up your own security for the coming year.
Implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Having several checks to verify a user’s identity makes it less likely that a successful phishing attempt will result in a breach. This can include layers such as a password, one-time security codes, or identity confirmation through an extra service. Although, of course, it’s important to ensure that the service has top-notch security itself.
Adopting a Zero Trust Security Model
Do not assume a device or user is trusted, and establish compliance checks at every interaction. Just because a user has access to one part of a system shouldn’t mean they automatically can access anything else.
Using Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
This software is a bit of a multi-tool, providing encryption, credential checks, and even malware prevention. However, note these are usually third-party, and vet any vendors you source CASB from.
Utilizing Threat Intelligence for Proactive Defense
Analyze your system and understand what the likely attack vectors are, which will allow you to actively build up defenses from those potential breaches. Continuously monitor information about attacks to stay aware of possible threats.
AI and Machine Learning for Advanced Threat Detection
A well-trained AI model can handle monitoring and alert you about attacks while also probing your system for gaps in SaaS security controls. This way, you have continuous updates for your security.
Continuous Monitoring and Security Audits
Even without AI, keeping an eye on your system and assessing possible threats and gaps in security is absolutely paramount. Occasional external audits can help spot issues that your internal checks have missed, too.
Protecting SaaS Data with Encryption and Key Management
As we demonstrated with the Sitel case, a lack of data encryption is a grave mistake. It can lead to major breaches. Similarly, leaving decryption keys easily accessible is pretty much the same as storing data in plaintext, so protect them behind auth layers.
Strengthening Compliance and Governance
A crucial part of approaching SaaS security is to set specific governance rules for separate applications and processes. Depending on how your platform works with sensitive data, it may require some specific compliance rules.
Advanced Strategies for Securing SaaS Platforms
Understandably, some companies don’t settle for just the general practices and want to do more. Here are some extra ways to ensure your SaaS security.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
CSPM constantly surveys your SaaS environment and highlights risks, detecting any threats and workflow disruptions. It also helps detect SaaS security misconfigurations, which can be an invisible threat to the ecosystem.
Leveraging AI for Behavioral Analytics
Aside from being used for proactive monitoring, AI also covers another use case among SaaS security best practices. It can collect data on how people interact with your SaaS platform and assess which of their actions (or inactions) could pose a risk to the system. This can be valuable for educating employees and preventing phishing or unauthorized access.
Advanced Identity Access Management (IAM) Solutions
Each employee or user has their own unique identity with specific access limitations. In order to ensure SaaS security, it’s important to lay those identities layered, where a user can have major privileges in one application sector but limited ones in another. This guarantees that there will be minimal workflow interruptions while users can still access all relevant data.
Implementing Secure SaaS Integrations
As we’ve pointed out in the challenges section, poor integrations can threaten SaaS security. So, the obvious thing to do is to ensure they’re set up properly, for example, by validating inputs. This helps confirm that login attempts are authorized and access requests are coming from a real source.
App Discovery and Monitoring for Hidden Risks
Last on our list of SaaS security best practices is the act of monitoring your traffic to detect attempted app connections and assess their trustworthiness. Tracking this allows you to uncover risks that you would not have been aware of otherwise. In fact, consistent monitoring with regular risk assessment is one of the best things one can do for their SaaS platform.
| Practice | Type of threat isolated |
|---|---|
| Constant monitoring | External attacks |
| Secure integrations | Low-security API connections |
| Access and identity management | Unauthorized access, phishing, credential leaks |
| AI use | Risk-enhancing behavior, unnoticed external access |
Protecting Your SaaS from Cyber Threats with Jetbase
As you can see, there are plenty of threats to SaaS security but just as many ways to enhance it for your company. If you want to make sure your data is safe for 2025 and the foreseeable future, recruit the help of a professional team like JetBase.
Our extensive experience with SaaS platforms, including cybersecurity products, puts us in a position to create custom, secure solutions and improve existing systems. The team emphasizes security and quality for each project we tackle, and yours can be next. If you’re ready to embrace SaaS security best practices, send us a message.
