Strengthening SaaS Security: Key Strategies for Data Protection

The global lockdowns have forced organizations large and small to go digital or die. SaaS solutions have come to our rescue with their helpful collaborative mechanisms, seamless scalability, and remote-friendly functionality. But our en-masse shift to SaaS also caught the attention of hackers. COVID-19 was blamed for a 238% surge in cyberattacks against banks. Kids were not spared either – ransomware targeted K12 schools going digital. Every sector and industry reported an increase in attacks – 71% of security professionals saw threats jump since COVID-19. Not surprising, as the lockdown saw a wealth of lucrative business-critical data moving to SaaS platforms accessed by remote workers over unsecured devices and networks. How can you secure your SaaS solutions from the scourge of ransomware, malware, malicious actors, social engineering scams? We’ve compiled a list of pointers to secure your SaaS solutions and mitigate the risk of security breaches.

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5 Pointers to Secure Your SaaS Solutions

#1 Ensure Data is Encrypted At-Rest and In-Transit

For optimal compliance, data should be encrypted at-rest and in-transit. Here are some recommendations by the Cloud Security Alliance on the encryption of cloud data. If your Cloud Service Provider (CSP) doesn’t encrypt your data both while storing it and during data transfer, your data may be more likely to be breached.

#2 Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication

If your CSP doesn’t support Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), then your data is prone to attack. Compromised credentials are the major cause of data breaches. Even strong passwords can be hacked easily through phishing, keystroke logging, and phishing malware attacks. By reducing dependence on passwords itself, MFA has been proven to block 99.9% of breaches. Best-in-class cloud platforms like Microsoft themselves mandate that those part of their CSP network secure authentication with MFA/2FA.

#3 Secure Shared Mailboxes and Drives

Shared mailboxes and drives help facilitate easy collaboration amongst a distributed workforce. However as ownership is fluid and access all-encompassing, they are vulnerable to breaches and data loss. Ensure that your backup provider also secures your Shared Mailboxes and Drives, so you can recover accidentally deleted data before it adversely impacts business.

#4 Formulate a Robust Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan (BC/DR)

A robust Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan (BC/DR) plan is critical to quickly recover from disasters such as breaches with minimal impact. Formulating the plan requires CIOs, CSOs, and IT managers to outline processes to help their organization prepare for and recover from disruptive events. It includes key metrics such as Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). Deciding on the RPO and RTO will help you make better strategic decisions around your choice of backup and disaster recovery solutions.

#5 Train Your Remote Workers To Be Cyber-secure

Employees can be your strongest/weakest cybersecurity link. Develop and evangelize a remote workforce policy. Train employees about social engineering red flags and phishing scams, especially COVID scams. Send regular emails with approved lists of software, and incident response steps.

Don’t Skip the Ultimate Safety Net: Backup and Recovery

A prevalent misconception is that SaaS data is immune to data loss and backup just isn’t worth the trouble or cost. However, SaaS data loss happens, frequently. Your SaaS solutions such as Microsoft 365 (Office 365), Google Workspace (G Suite), Salesforce, SharePoint, and OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box are susceptible to data loss due to:

Human Error
Phishing/Social Engineering attacks
Malicious insiders
Ransomware
System downtime
Outages

Backup blunts the effects of a disaster with the failsafe guarantee that you can quickly recover your valuable data. Thus ensuring quick disaster recovery and seamless business continuity. Read our free ebook: 7 Reasons Why Office 365 Needs Backup

Secure ALL Your SaaS Solutions With One Top-rated Solution

CloudAlly secures all your SaaS data with one top-rated backup solution that requires zero adoption effort, installation or maintenance. Moreover, our solutions are stringently secure

We provide AES 256 bit encryption via Amazon Web Services, the leading cloud services platform, for your data in-transit and at-rest. With the choice of multiple data center locations in the EU, Australia, the US, and Canada.
We support MFA and OAuth. We even offer the option to make it mandatory for access.
Our solutions are stringently secure and compliant – ISO 27001 certified, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant, with 99.9% Uptime / Availability SLA.
We offer granular and point-in-time recovery which coupled with unlimited data retention and unlimited storage, means you have demonstrable recovery of any/all of your data from any point-in-time.

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