SaaS Has Become a Bigger Attack Target

With more organizations shifting workloads and data to the cloud to support remote and virtual workforces, SaaS environments have become a big attacker target. Expect IT staff to be increasingly engaged in managing their organizations' SaaS applications and cloud footprint, says Brendan O'Connor, CEO and co-founder at AppOmni.

Increasingly, tools -- such as those required for scanning APIs between applications to automate SaaS configuration, and monitor user access, activity, and changes in the environments -- are going to become important, he says.

"The shift to the cloud, unfortunately, has not gone unnoticed by hackers and bad actors," O'Connor says. "As organizations play catch-up, attackers are shifting their strategy to leverage the lack of SaaS expertise and necessary tooling to monitor and keep attackers at bay."

Many IT teams are struggling to keep up with the massive operational changes caused by the pandemic and the resulting accelerated rate of cloud adoption, according to a survey of 200 IT security professionals conducted by AppOmni earlier this year. Due to increased responsibilities tied to COVID-19-related changes, 68% said they had less time to spend on managing and securing SaaS applications.

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