As technology advances, threats against your organization’s digital infrastructure grow larger and more complex. Thankfully, the same can be said about cybersecurity measures aimed at minimizing risks. In recent years, SSPM platforms have gained a lot of popularity for offering robust security for organizations.
Short for Software-as-a-Service, SaaS has become one of the go-to solutions for organizations to take advantage of applications and web-based programs across the board. From communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams to utilities like Grammarly, SaaS apps help companies in numerous domains.
According to a study published in 2024 on Statista, in 2022, organizations worldwide used an average of 130 SaaS applications. Managing all of these programs and ensuring everything is set up appropriately across the board is an undeniably important step toward cybersecurity. Only one vulnerability in one of your SaaS apps can lead to a disastrous breach, exposing sensitive data and potentially compromising the entire organization’s security.
As the number of SaaS applications a company utilizes grows, so does the challenge of managing them effectively. Because of this, it is essential for organizations to implement up-to-date security protocols to neutralize threats. As mentioned, SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) stands out as the go-to method to ensure all of your SaaS apps are correctly configured.
In this post, I will explain everything you need to know about SSPM platforms, how they operate, their use cases, and how they compare to other cybersecurity software solutions.
What Is SSPM?
Short for SaaS Security Posture Management, SSPM is a cybersecurity method that focuses on safeguarding how your SaaS applications operate and are set up. As companies rely more on services like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, SSPM becomes an essential measure to address potential misconfigurations, compliance violations, and risks related to data leakage.
An SSPM platform aids you by continuously monitoring and assessing SaaS configurations according to industry standards to detect and prevent issues revolving around user permissions, data security, and misconfigured settings.
Do the admins in apps like Slack have permissions beyond what is necessary? Are there users with elevated privileges that pose potential security risks? Can users access sensitive data in SaaS apps without approval? Are there shadow IT applications or unapproved third-party integrations accessing organizational data? These are some of the questions an SSPM platform helps you find answers to.
How Does SaaS Security Posture Management Work?
An SSPM platform offers different components to prevent potential security threats, alert your organization’s security team about misconfigurations, and ensure all your SaaS apps operate as they should. It relies on predefined security policies aligned with industry standards, like CIS or NIST, which help guide configurations across SaaS environments.
Configuration management is the first layer of SaaS posture management an SSPM platform offers. SSPM looks over user permissions and identifies unnecessary privileges or unauthorized access to SaaS resources. This allows for maintaining least-privileged access policies without negatively affecting employees’ workflow.
Another core aspect of SaaS security management is offering real-time alerts to security teams about unusual user activities on SaaS platforms. For example, if an attacker gains access to an employee’s account, SSPM can detect anomalies in user behavior, user logins coming from unusual locations, or erratic access times.
Moreover, SSPM can detect if a user suddenly downloads large amounts of data from platforms like Google Drive when they shouldn’t. For instance, a salesperson suddenly downloading an entire client database right before filing their two-week notice can be a potential threat. SSPM detects such suspicious anomalies and alerts the security team for further investigation.
Also, SSPM can track unauthorized third-party integrations, ensuring unapproved SaaS apps do not have access to the company’s sensitive data.
Lastly, by assessing SaaS apps across your company and how they are configured, SSPM tools help you ensure you adhere to data protection standard protocols like GDPR and HIPAA. Moreover, you’ll have access to automatically generated compliance reports.
Does Your Organization Need SSPM?
According to a study conducted by Gartner, preventable misconfigurations or mistakes by end users will account for over 99% of cloud breaches in 2025. Since most apps used in corporate environments are SaaS, ensuring you integrate a robust SSPM is vital for most companies.
Many businesses rely on SaaS environments to a great extent. However, some companies have minimal SaaS usage and handle low-sensitivity data. Naturally, the urgency for implementing SSPM methods is higher for the former group than for the latter.
Financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and tech companies are among the groups that need SSPM strategies the most. Such organizations usually implement SaaS apps to communicate and handle sensitive data. A customer database leakage, for instance, can jeopardize a bank’s reputation to a great extent.
On the other hand, small local businesses that don’t use cloud-based software, or manufacturing companies that primarily use on-premise systems, may not benefit much from specialized SaaS posture management. There are other cybersecurity measures that, according to your business type, can prove more useful.
Does SSPM Suffice to Cover All Cloud Security Needs?
While SaaS security management plays an undeniably important role in safeguarding SaaS apps, it does not answer all digital and cloud-based cybersecurity needs across an organization’s infrastructure. SSPM offers certain strategies and tactics to reduce specific risks regarding SaaS, and it does an excellent job in what it does. However, it doesn’t cover broader security needs such as endpoint protection, network security, and infrastructure management.
While valuable, SSPM should be part of a larger, layered, and more comprehensive security architecture to fully protect an organization against cybersecurity threats. As a holistic approach, SSPM must be complemented with certain other cybersecurity measures to ensure all loose ends are tied up and security risks are minimized.
Let’s explore how SSPM stacks up against other popular cybersecurity software available on the market.
SSPM Compared to Other Software: Which Should You Implement?
SSPM solutions are among the best cybersecurity software out there that rank high among organizations in different industries with different sizes. As mentioned, using multiple solutions simultaneously is key to having a strong security infrastructure. One of the best solutions to pair with SSPM is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).
CSPM offers broader monitoring and threat detection in cloud architectures and across infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments. If you’re using cloud-based computers or VPS services, setting up a CSPM platform can be highly beneficial. By monitoring your Clouds infrastructure, it ensures no misconfigurations are compromising the security of your cloud-oriented assets.
CASB is another security solution that complements CSPM decently. Short for Cloud Access Security Broker, a CASB software solution works as the gatekeeper between your organization’s on-premise assets and its cloud provider. It enforces security policies to ensure the protection of data moving between users and cloud servers.
If your organization has applications, implementing Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) solutions ensures the security of applications throughout their development lifecycle. By identifying and prioritizing code vulnerabilities and configuration issues in the application layer, ASPM ensures your services are working as they should. Pair that up with SSPM software, and you can minimize security threats from both first-party and third-party applications.
Another security solution comparable to SSPM is Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). It centers on securing data across all environments, identifying, classifying, and monitoring sensitive data regardless of where it resides, on-premises or on cloud. By offering data visibility and risk assessment, DSPM helps prevent unauthorized access and data leaks across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
Best SSPM Solutions for Businesses
Over the years, many new companies have joined the market to offer SSPM solutions. Among them, Adaptive Shield is one of the most popular options for financial services firms. Through offering regular security checks and remediation methods Adaptive Shield gives you step-by-step information for improving security of your SaaS apps.
Similarly, AppOmni offers a similar set of features as a SSPM solution, Moreover, since it comes with DevSecOps practices built in its platform, enterprise-level security teams can respond to threats efficiently and at scale as SaaS application adoption grows.
Last but not least, Obsidian’s CDR platform is another reputable SSPM solution for companies in different industries. Obsidian claims its platform is capable of stopping even the most advanced attacks across SaaS and cloud services by using a unique identity-centric approach.
There are various options to consider in the field of cybersecurity. Depending on your company’s needs, goals, infrastructure, and budget, the best SSPM solution can vary.
Final Thoughts: SSPM Is Necessary, but Not Sufficient for All Security Needs
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platforms provide vital solutions to safeguard configurations and activities on SaaS apps like Slack, Microsoft 365, and Google Drive. By monitoring user activity and preventing data breaches, SSPM helps your company take advantage of SaaS platforms as safely as possible.
While that’s an important aspect of cybersecurity for SaaS-dependent infrastructures, an SSPM platform cannot tackle all security-threatening obstacles that come your way. Your best bet is to use other cybersecurity platforms alongside SSPM to minimize security threats.
FAQ
What are some examples of SaaS security threats?
Incorrect settings and misconfigurations in SaaS apps can expose sensitive data or increase vulnerability to attacks. Also, overly broad privileges for users and unauthorized data access can lead to misuse. Malicious insiders or compromised accounts may download large amounts of sensitive data.
What does SSPM mean?
It stands for for SaaS Security Posture Management and deals with configuring and monitoring SaaS apps. As a cybersecurity software, making sure users have proper access to SaaS platforms is the most prominent responsibility of SSPM meaning users should have neither too much nor too little privilege across the board.
What is the difference between CASB and SSPM?
CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) acts as a gatekeeper between users and cloud services, ensuring data is protected and proper policies are enforced during cloud access. On the other hand, SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management) focuses on monitoring configurations, permissions, and compliance within SaaS apps to ensure everything runs as it should.
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