SaaS companies are extremely exposed to attacks.
The pressure to ship code fast means that potential vulnerabilities get ignored and fixing them isn’t a priority for the product team… until the worst happens.
Besides, malicious hackers know that they’re an easy target. Exposed vulnerabilities, personal data from users, and high-cash flow businesses make for good prey.
In this guide, we explain everything you need to do to protect your SaaS to avoid data leaks, ransomware, and in general keep your business safe. We’ll touch on:
SaaS companies were always a target for hackers. They’re profitable, have no security processes, and host personal data like emails and payment details, which makes them an easy target. However, despite the threat, CTOs and CEOs postpone protection. We often heard excuses like:
And while before these products might have been able to roll with it, there will be a time when an attack will come. Fast code deployment from agile development and a focus on “Ship first, fix later” leads to a breeding ground for hackers and the consequences that come from it.
Hopefully, you’re now on the same page as us: security matters and it shouldn’t be postponed.
Now… how do we go about actually securing our app while considering that we still need to ship features fast and have extremely tight resources?
There are many ways to do so and for each, you have to take into account the specific needs of your company. We’ll break each of them down for you!
This is always the first thing you should do. EASM identifies all of your assets, including external ones, so you can understand where the attacks come from.
If you start thinking like a military general, it makes sense: if you don’t know the terrain you’re fighting on (your assets), then the enemy (the hackers) has an immediate advantage over you. This gets even more difficult when the external digital footprint of your company can be much larger than the internal network, due to interactions between staff, customers, and third parties.
The goal here is to uncover threats that are difficult to detect, such as shadow IT systems, so you can better understand your organization’s true external attack surface. EASM enables security and IT teams to identify unknowns, prioritize risk, eliminate threats, and extend vulnerability and exposure control beyond the firewall.
The External Attack Surface Insights are generated by leveraging vulnerability and infrastructure data to showcase the key areas of concern for your organization. For this, a good EASM should identify several exposed assets, such as Domains, Hostnames, Web Pages, IP Blocks, IP Addresses, ASNs, SSL Certificates, and WHOIS Contacts.
Now, when it comes to choosing the right EASM, you should take these features into account:
So if you want to get started with EASM, follow the steps below:
This is the most basic DevSecOps process you can implement and that’s why we think every SaaS should get started with it. In short, it detects vulnerabilities in your source code before you ship it to prod.
This is completely automatic. There are many tools out there that just scan your code and let you know about the vulnerabilities. It mostly prevents SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and buffer overflows. But it lacks the depth to prevent every kind of vulnerability. It’s not a silver bullet.
Pros of SAST
Cons of SAST:
“So why should I do this?
Because it’s still effective! It’s the starting point to keep ANY SaaS app secure. Teams ship code at least every 15 days. You need to make sure you’re not adding vulnerabilities every time you release to production.
If you think this is the right tool for you, here are some guidelines on where to start:
If you want to get started, here are some recommendations for SAST tools. They’re in no particular order:
Do keep in mind that the SAST is not a fully-fledged security test. It’ll highlight the most easily exploitable vulnerabilities… and that’s it. It won’t hold off highly skilled hackers. Still, if you’re starting out, do this. It’s the first step to having secure software.
DAST is a method of evaluating the security of a web application by analyzing its behavior in real-time. It involves sending simulated attacks to the application and observing how it responds. DAST can identify vulnerabilities that are difficult to detect with other methods, such as injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
DAST is important because developers don’t have to rely solely on their own knowledge when building applications. By conducting DAST during the SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle), you can catch vulnerabilities in an application before it’s deployed to the public. If these vulnerabilities are left unchecked and the app is deployed as such, this could lead to a data breach, resulting in major financial loss and damage to your brand reputation.
Humans make mistakes and errors will inevitably contribute to some stage in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), and the sooner a vulnerability is caught during the SDLC, the cheaper it is to fix.
Since DAST works by simulating automated attacks on an application, it doesn’t have internal information about it or the source code, they attack just as a malicious hacker would, with only a certain amount of knowledge and information. After a DAST scanner performs these attacks, it looks for results that are not part of the expected result set and identifies security vulnerabilities.
The goal here is to find outcomes or results that were not expected and could therefore be used by attackers to compromise an application.
Pros of DAST:
Now, if you want to properly integrate DAST, you need to make sure you have the right processes in order:
IAST stands for Interactive Application Security Testing. It is a modern approach to application security testing that combines elements of both DAST and SAST techniques. In IAST, security testing is performed dynamically during application runtime by instrumenting the application code and monitoring its behavior for potential vulnerabilities.
The goal of using IAST is to provide a real-time, in-depth security analysis of running applications. This helps identify vulnerabilities that may be missed by traditional testing methods and provides accurate results by analyzing the actual code execution paths.
Pros of using IAST:
Cons of using IAST:
Here are some of the most common cases of IAST
Integrating IAST into your organization can be simplified into the following five steps:
For using this testing mechanism, here are some suggestions that you can start with:
Software Component Analysis (SCA) is a technique used to identify and track open-source software components used in an application's codebase. SCA helps detect known vulnerabilities, license compliance issues, and other risks associated with using open-source components. It is an essential part of any organization's security and compliance efforts.
SCA is important because nowadays everyone is using open-source code, and it’s hard to keep track of what each of these tools - including their vulnerabilities.
A weak point in their code is a weak point in your infrastructure. Not only does SCA help you find vulnerabilities, but it also helps you keep track of usage licenses. And all of this is done automatically!
But do not forget that it also faces some drawbacks. For example, false positives. They’re a common issue, and it’s bad because every false positive steals time away from your team. In addition, you also need to keep an eye out, as the SCA doesn’t always detect new vulnerabilities, or vulnerabilities from subcomponents or dynamically loaded libraries.
You can check out the following SCA tools:
Penetration Testing (pentesting) is a vulnerability assessment method that involves simulating a real-world attack on a web application or network to identify and potentially exploit vulnerabilities. A pentest typically involves a series of manual and automated tests to evaluate an application's security posture and identify potential attack vectors.
Pentests are great as they use more complex attack vectors, something that automated tools struggle with. They usually also go over the whole application, while tools focus on a specific part of it.
By the way, if you want to be fully compliant with certain regulations like PCI DSS or GDPR, then we recommend doing pentests. But do keep in mind that pentesting is not a silver bullet. We’ll show you some drawbacks and some ways to turn the situation around. For example:
Limited Scope
While pentesting focuses on specific targets or applications, potentially leaving other parts of the infrastructure or technology stack unexplored, you can conduct comprehensive scoping exercises to identify critical assets and potential attack surfaces beyond specific targets.
Trusting the Pentesters
A pentest requires placing trust in outside employees to conduct legal activities on your behalf and finding trustworthy pentesting companies can be challenging. To make this easier, you should research and engage with pentesting companies that have a proven track record and positive customer reviews. Not only that but you should also request references and ask for certifications such as OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional) to validate their expertise.
Damage and Disruption
Penetration tests may unintentionally cause server crashes, network slowdowns, data corruption, or other negative impacts on the tested systems. In this case, you should implement thorough planning and coordination with the pentesting team to minimize potential disruptions or impacts on production systems. You can also conduct this type of testing in controlled environments, such as staging or isolated test environments, to mitigate the risk of unintended consequences.
Rigid Methodologies
Usually pentesting follow rules and frameworks such as OWASP, PTED, PCI OSSTMM, SANS Top 25, and WASC. This can be automated 90% of the time and, it also limits pentesters creativity. It’s ok if you look to cybersecurity, as a requirement and not as a facilitator. If you want to reach the extra mile you should allow some type of flexibility within the testing methodologies to encourage creative and unconventional approaches. Another option could be hiring ethical hackers.
Limited Vulnerabilities
Penetration testing has a finite testing period, limiting the number of vulnerabilities that can be discovered. For this, you should consider periodic vulnerability assessments and continuous security monitoring to complement pentesting efforts and identify vulnerabilities that may emerge after a test. In this case, you can also search for continuous pentesting tools.
Time Intensive and Costly
Penetration tests are expensive, especially when hiring reputable consulting firms, and they require a significant time commitment from your own team to analyze the results and address any identified issues. To make the most of the pentest, prioritize critical assets and focus on high-risk areas to optimize testing efforts and cost-effectiveness.
Timing and Frequency
Pentesting is typically performed periodically, such as annually or biannually. However, cyber threats and attack techniques evolve rapidly. Vulnerabilities discovered after a pentest may remain unaddressed until the next scheduled test, leaving the system exposed to potential attacks during that time. For this part, you can adopt a more agile and continuous approach to security testing by integrating security into the development lifecycle. This can be done with techniques like secure coding practices, security testing automation, and regular security updates.
Human Factor
Pentesting relies on the skills and expertise of the testers. The effectiveness of a pentest heavily depends on the experience, knowledge, and creativity of the individuals performing it. Human errors, biases, or limited knowledge in specific areas can impact the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the tests.
However, humans are the ones making this possible and your team can stay updated on the latest attack techniques and emerging threats by sharing knowledge with the pentesters.
If you want to start with pentesting, check out some of the platforms below:
This is a little bit different than pentesting because it puts real ethical hackers doing vulnerability assessment. As we said, pentesting depends a lot on the quality of the pentester. The problem with pentesting is that it’s usually very checklist based.
Ethical hacking is more impact-focused because hackers usually earn depending on the impact of the vulnerability and not on the number of hours of testing.
This will allow you to go deeper and find vulnerabilities with greater impact.
The advantage is that you let hackers do what they do best, be creative, and think outside the box, without being limited by a checklist. On the other hand, you’ll be letting go of control of the process.
Here are some options to get started with Ethical Hacking:
Third-party vulnerability assessments involves an external security company or consultant performing security tests. The goal is to find vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious hackers.
This, however, is not for your company. It’s for your suppliers and vendors. They will be the ones getting audited to ensure they’re compliant and thus can keep doing business with you.
If your security depended solely on you, everything would be easier. Unfortunately, it is not. You need to make sure all the companies you interact with are compliant. And while this can get pricy, it’s still needed if you want full protection.
We don’t recommend doing this assessment for smaller SaaS. They should be focused on the other recommendations outlined above, as they’re much more impactful.
Consider the following options for running an assessment:
You work in a SaaS, so you already know what an API is. Not going to dive into that!
However, you should be aware that APIs are a common way for hackers to gain access. Take a look at Twitter. In 2023 the data of over 200 million profiles were leaked thanks to API abuse. If Twitter is on the line, so can you. Make sure you pick the right tool. It should have:
And as before, we recommend some tools to get the job done:
And that’s it!
This is the complete guide for keeping your SaaS safe. In short, you should:
The importance of cybersecurity just keeps growing by the day. Make sure you stay safe out there!