Switch to remote work brings SaaS security challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many enterprises to fast-track their adoption of remote work technologies and many have turned to SaaS as a way to enable this.

But this has put new pressure on security teams. A new survey from SaaS security specialist AppOmni finds that of over 200 IT security specialists 90 percent have recently received additional responsibilities and two-thirds have less time to effectively manage and secure SaaS applications.

It shows that 93 percent of respondents have received more responsibilities due to COVID-19, while 66 percent of respondents experienced reduced time to spend on management and security of SaaS due to the shift to remote work. In addition 68 percent of respondents say they rely solely on manual efforts to detect data exposures.

"Due to COVID-19, IT teams are struggling to keep up with massive changes to day-to-day operations and the accelerated rate of cloud adoption associated with a remote and virtual workforce," says Brendan O'Connor, CEO of AppOmni. "This highlights the need for companies to work to better secure their current SaaS applications given that 90 percent of the respondents we surveyed noted that their usage of SaaS applications have increased in adoption since the beginning of the pandemic."

More than half of respondents (52 percent) state that their biggest challenge with existing cloud security solutions is their reactive nature. These solutions only alert security teams of a problem after an incident has already been detected rather than a proactive solution identifying data exposures before they can manifest into an incident.

"These days, more organizations are investing in preventative solutions and gaining visibility into their cloud attack surface than ever before," adds O'Connor. "Even post COVID-19, businesses will need to offer remote work opportunities to stay competitive. Now is the time to implement a hybrid working strategy that includes mission-critical SaaS applications. Companies that wait until it's too late are going to find themselves behind the curve, making them easy targets for attackers."

The full survey is available on the AppOmni site.

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