Biggest Cybersecurity Risks When Choosing Saas Provider

Nowadays with the wide use of the Internet on daily basis all kinds of cybersecurity risks have come and gone. Their severity ranges from minor to extremely harmful, which makes cybersecurity an issue of great importance. Malicious attacks will remain as long as the Internet does. Nevertheless, there are a great deal of security risks that are recognizable and avoidable. In this article, we are going to present the most common cybersecurity risks and how to tackle them.

Software as a Service (SaaS) companies have undergone a large growth in the recent years. The usage of SaaS platforms is certainly advantageous and immense, however, like in real life, the Internet poses security threats. In the past years security concerns for SaaS companies have increased immensely. Although it is important to focus on scaling and growing their user-base, the businesses should prioritize on safeguarding their customers’ data and ensuring cyber security.

Malware and ransomware

The most abundant and widespread cybersecurity threat is malware. It occurs when an unwanted piece of software or programing installs itself on the target system, triggering uncommon, strange behavior. The threat can range from rejecting access to programs, erasing files, data theft, and spreading itself to other systems.

Ransomware is currently considered the most troubling threat. The ransomware is a foul form of malware that installs itself on a user system. Once it is set up, it impedes access to functionalities until a ransom is paid to a third party. Consequently, the computer may be locked, or the data on it might be deleted, encrypted, or stolen. It is also common that ransomware spreads to other machines. In order to unlock your machine, you should pay the ransom which is typically requested in cryptocurrency. Nowadays, as companies have started to focus on building stronger protections to shield from ransomware breaches, some experts believe hackers will progressively target other potentially profitable ransomware victims such as high-net-worth individuals.

Advice:

To mitigate this cybersecurity threat, for example, make sure to always have a recent offline backup of your most important data and files. Law enforcement does not encourage, approve or accept the payment of ransom demands. You should be aware that if you pay the ransom there is no assurance that you would recover access to your data or machine, your computer would still be infected, and you could become a potential target in the future. Businesses should take actions to minimize the consequence of data extraction. 

Phishing risks

Phishing scams are an old attack that depend on social engineering to accomplish its objective. Usually, the end user receives an email or message that demands sensitive data, like a password. The phishing message often seems official, using what appears to be valid credentials. This coerces the user to click on links and unintendedly expose sensitive information. Phishing emails can impact a business of any type and size. They can reach millions of users directly and the attacks can install malware (such as ransomware), sabotage systems, or steal intellectual property and money. Nowadays, when employees at most organizations are more aware of the dangers of email phishing, hackers are adjusting and improving their attacks — for example, using machine learning swiftly establish and distribute persuasive fake messages in the hopes that end users will Inadvertently compromise their organization’s systems and networks.

Advice:

The National Cyber Security Centre recommends you take a multi-layered approach. Merely depending on employees being able to spot phishing emails is a method with little success. Experts recommend you broaden your protection ad security measures. Firstly, make sure to create obstacles and make it hard for attackers to reach your users. Secondly, facilitate and assist user in recognizing and reporting supposed phishing emails. Lastly, take extra measures to safeguard your business from undetected phishing attacks, and make sure to address threats quickly. 

Data breaches

Data breaches continue to be one of the top cybersecurity threats, considering the extensive damage they cause the companies in repairs afterwards. Security and data breaches are cybersecurity threats that organizations face every day. To ensure that your SaaS supplier can alleviate and overpower data and privacy breaches make sure to investigate whether their security team is equipped to tackle a cyber-attack. Ensure that in the event of security breach your provider can properly identify the threat and take proper measures to resolve the issue(s). While user experience may be compromised, encryption is still an advisable way of safeguarding sensitive data from data breaches.

To resolve the security issues listed above, SaaS companies should strengthen and upgrade their existing security practices and establish new ones as the SaaS environment is constantly advancing. Backing up your data in an essential step that would help you in case of emergency and security breach. One of the most crucial things you and your company can do is obtain an ISAE 3402 or 3000 report that which is a non-biased approval of data handling. This guarantees that your cybersecurity procedures are in accordance with the accepted standards, both for internal and external users.

Security awareness

The absence of a formal security awareness program for all users of a SaaS application can result in an instance where your data is exposed to a ton of security risks, like social engineering attacks, phishing scams, inadvertent leaks of confidential data, and more. The lack of a proper security awareness program for all employees and users of SaaS software companies can result in incidents where data is exposed to a large amount of security risks, like social engineering attacks, phishing scams, inadvertent leaks of confidential data, and more. Arranging security awareness campaigns for your organization would help prevent the occurrence of security accidents and cyberattacks.

Risk assessment 

In the event that one application or machine in your company exposes you to cyber risk, then all other machines and applications connected to it will get ‘infected’ as well. For this reason, you must assess the security risk of every program, application, and machine that you use. You need to test and verify everything from risk configuration of an application to their compliance with standard security protocols and control admission credentials for any unusual occurrences.

Cybersecurity risks continue to develop in complexity. Understanding them and establishing appropriate safety practices is an excellent way to properly safeguard your networks and systems, thus, providing security for your workplace environment. In AskCody we do so by regularly complying with the international safety regulations. We have obtained an ISAE 3000 report and are protected against OWASP Top 10 security risks.