Cloud-based software such as SaaS is essential for today’s workforce, but managing its use can be tricky. SaaS applications often contain sensitive information that needs safeguarding. As more businesses move online, managing “insider threats” – risks from departing employees – has become a top priority for security teams. When employees leave, they may still have access to sensitive data and applications. This can be a security risk if someone with bad intentions uses this access to steal information, disrupt operations, or launch cyberattacks.
What is Insider Risk Management?
Insider Risk Management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating risks associated with employees, contractors, or any individuals with access to confidential data or systems. It encompasses intentional misuse of access as well as unintentional errors that may result in data breaches. The primary objective is to proactively prevent and minimize potential threats.
Challenges of Offboarding Employees
The rise of remote work has led to a boom in SaaS applications, thanks to their ease of use with decentralized teams. But as companies face issues like layoffs and budget cuts, security and IT teams struggle to properly offboard employees. A key concern is removing access and permissions to company applications and files.
Failing to take away these permissions can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches. SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) tools can help security teams efficiently disable user accounts, remove permissions, and cut off access across multiple SaaS applications.
To overcome these challenges, companies need to automate and constantly monitor their offboarding procedures. Automation ensures consistent and thorough removal of access across all platforms, reducing the risk of human error. Continuous monitoring quickly identifies unusual user activity after offboarding, allowing organizations to address potential security risks swiftly.
The Risks of Weak Offboarding
Poor offboarding practices expose businesses to various security risks. These include unauthorized access, data breaches, compromised systems, and vulnerabilities. The consequences of these risks can be severe, including legal penalties, financial losses, reputational damage, and lost customer trust. Data theft is a major risk during the offboarding process.
To mitigate such incidents, security teams must prioritize severing access to SaaS applications for departing employees, revoking their permissions, and securing company devices. Furthermore, vigilance towards suspicious user activities such as atypical data transfers or excessive downloading is crucial for identifying potential threats and minimizing risk. SSPM solutions offer a non-intrusive approach to monitoring user activity by concentrating on specifics of data sharing, including the type of files shared, their destinations, and the identities of the sharers.
With a large number of employee layoffs happening, security teams are under pressure to ensure secure and efficient offboarding procedures. Departing employees may have different permission levels and store data in the cloud. To address this, security professionals and CISOs should use SSPM technology to improve the security and efficiency of the offboarding process. Through automation, a reliable SSPM solution can streamline offboarding by ensuring departing employees’ access to sensitive data is revoked accordingly.
Ensuring Compliance Through Effective Offboarding
Proper offboarding plays a vital role in reducing legal and compliance risks. Companies must ensure a smooth transition for departing employees by taking away physical and digital permissions. Failing to do so can not only pose security risks but also lead to significant legal problems.
Compliance standards, as mandated by ISO and SOC audits, necessitate meticulous revocation of access and permissions, securing company assets, and adherence to critical offboarding protocols. SSPM solutions enhance the process of evidence gathering by offering a comprehensive overview of user access across all applications. This enables security teams to demonstrate compliance effectively, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information.
Four SSPM Tips for Strong Insider Risk Management
- Identify Your SaaS Applications: Find all the SaaS applications and users within your company to understand your potential weaknesses. With this knowledge, SSPM helps you identify access rights to prevent unauthorized access.
- Monitor for Unusual User Activity: Stay vigilant for unusual SaaS behavior all year round, especially during the notice periods of employees. Monitor for any suspicious activities such as atypical data transfers or deletions. Implementing a superior, always-active SSPM solution enhances your ability to prevent potential SaaS breaches effectively.
- Offboard Carefully: Take immediate action to terminate connections of former employees who may still be accessing your company’s SaaS applications. Using built-in automation helps speed up and simplify monitoring and managing all applications, users, and data, ensuring no departing employee can still access your critical business information.
- Regularly Review Permissions: Conduct regular audits of permissions granted by users to SaaS applications, paying attention to the difference between “write” and “read” access. This helps prevent excessive permissions from being given in areas with sensitive data. By controlling user permissions, organizations can effectively reduce the risk of data leaks and strengthen insider risk management practices, resulting in a well-protected SaaS environment.
