Cybercriminals will be busy again this year. To protect the environment and be successful in 2023, he will focus on four key areas to keep systems and data secure and ensure business only gets press when it needs to: .
1 — Web Application Weaknesses
Web applications are central to what SaaS companies do and how they operate, and can store some of the most sensitive information, such as valuable customer data.
Because SaaS applications are often multi-tenant, they need to be protected against logic flaws, injection flaws, access control vulnerabilities, and other attacks that allow one customer to access another customer’s data. These are easy to exploit by hackers and are easy mistakes to make when writing code.
Design and develop secure web applications by combining security testing with automated vulnerability scanners with regular penetration testing to integrate with existing environments and catch vulnerabilities introduced throughout the development cycle. can be built.
2 — Misconfiguration
Cloud environments can be complex. The CTO or DevOps Engineer is responsible for securing all settings, user roles, and permissions to ensure compliance with industry and company policies. Therefore, it is very difficult to detect misconfigurations and fix them manually. According to Gartner, they cause 80% of all data security breaches, and by 2025, up to 99% of failures in cloud environments will be attributed to human error.
External network monitoring is a must to mitigate risk, but penetration testing of cloud infrastructure reveals issues such as misconfigured S3 buckets, permissive firewalls within VPCs, and overly permissive cloud accounts. It becomes clear.
While you can audit yourself with manual review in conjunction with tools like Scoutsuite, vulnerability scanners like Intruder reduce your attack surface by allowing access to only those services that should be exposed to the internet. It is also useful for reducing and monitoring.
3 — Vulnerable Software and Patching
This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s still a big problem for everyone and every business. SaaS companies are no exception. If you are self-hosting your application, you should ensure that operating system and library security patches are applied as they are released. Unfortunately, this is an ongoing process as security vulnerabilities in operating systems and libraries are constantly being discovered and fixed.
Using DevOps practices and ephemeral infrastructure can ensure that your services are always deployed on fully patched systems with each release, but you also avoid new weaknesses that may be discovered between releases. It should also be monitored.
Alternatives to self-hosting are free (and paid) serverless and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings that run applications inside containers and handle operating system patching. However, you should ensure that the libraries used by your service are kept up-to-date with security patches.
4 — Weak internal security policies and practices
While many SaaS companies may be small and growing and have poor security postures, hackers don’t discriminate, so SaaS businesses are particularly vulnerable. A few simple measures like using a password manager, enabling two-factor authentication, and security training can greatly improve your protection.
A cost-effective, easy-to-implement password manager helps you maintain secure, unique passwords across all the online services you and your team use. Make sure everyone on the team has one he uses.
Enable two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) whenever possible. 2FA requires a second authentication token in addition to the correct password. This can be either a hardware security key (most secure), a time-based one-time password (moderately secure), or a one-time password sent to a mobile device (least secure). Not all services support 2FA, but if they do, you should enable it.
Finally, make sure your team knows how to maintain good cyber hygiene, especially how to recognize and avoid clicking on phishing links.
Conclusion
Ultimately, cybersecurity is a balance of risk and resources, a fine line that needs to be walked, especially for start-ups with thousands of competing priorities. But as your revenue grows, you need to increase your investment in cybersecurity accordingly.
We have many security specialists to help you stay safe and find weaknesses in your system. Intruder is one of them. We help thousands of small businesses stay safe every day.
Intruder offers penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to reduce your attack surface and protect your systems from these threats. Its continuous scanning helps you stay up-to-date with the latest vulnerabilities and alert you to new threats that may affect your exposed systems. Get it or try it free for 14 days today.
