Complexity and risk worries grow as organizations move to SaaS
A rise in SaaS adoption is prompting concerns over operational complexity and risk according to a new report from SaaSOps platform BetterCloud.
Since 2015, the number of IT-sanctioned SaaS apps has increased tenfold, and it's expected that by 2025, 85 percent of business apps will be SaaS-based. Yet only half (49 percent) of respondents are confident in their ability to identify and monitor unsanctioned SaaS usage on company networks.
More than three-quarters (76 percent) see unsanctioned apps as a security risk and when asked what SaaS applications are likely to hold the most sensitive data across an organization, respondents named the top five as: files stored in cloud storage, email, devices, chat apps, and password managers.
Respondents also highlight slow, manual management tasks as a prime concern when managing SaaS environments. IT organizations can spend over seven hours offboarding a single employee from a company’s SaaS apps, which takes time and energy from other projects.
"In the earlier part of the year, organizations around the world were faced with powering their entire workforces from home and turned to SaaS to make the shift with as little disruption to productivity as possible," says David Politis, CEO of BetterCloud. "Up until this point, most companies were adopting a cloud-first approach for their IT infrastructure -- that strategy has now shifted to cloud only. But SaaS growth at this scale has also brought about challenges as our 2020 State of SaaSOps report clearly outlines. The findings also show increased confidence and reliance on SaaSOps as the path forward to reigning in SaaS management and security."
On average, organizations use 80 SaaS apps today. This is a fivefold increase in just three years and a tenfold increase since 2015.
You can get the full report from the BetterCloud site.
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