Software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are the driving force behind modern, successful marketing operations. Apps for marketing that facilitate seamless collaboration between marketing teams, agencies, freelancers, subject matter experts, and others include Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, Asana, Monday, and Box.
For marketers, these apps act as their digital command centers. They contain crucial go-to-market plans and are frequently linked to real payment systems with the authority to allocate large sums of money. Due to the large number of applications, users, connected apps, application owners, configurations within each app, and other factors, ensuring their security is a challenging task.
This article examines the most common use cases for Marketing SaaS applications, including external users, publicly shared links, connected apps, and credit cards. It also discusses how to protect the security and integrity of the data that is stored in these applications.
- Third-Party Users
Marketing departments usually give agency and freelance partners who require access to sensitive reports and data in order to function administrative or high-access permissions. Nonetheless, overseeing these outside users can be a difficult undertaking. It’s critical to keep a careful eye on their permissions and reduce them to the barest minimum. Furthermore, there’s frequently a lag between when an employee quits an agency and the agency informing the client. Former workers can keep their access during this time.
- Links Shared Publicly
It’s common for team members to need to share files, folders, and project management boards when collaborating with agencies. An alluring option is to use a single set of public links for all users, which reduces the amount of administrative work that needs to be done each time a new user joins the project.
This strategy, however, may unintentionally expose private information to former agency staff members or other recipients, since public links are accessible to all users.
- Linked Credit Card Numbers
Large sums of money are frequently involved in marketing budgets, and this financial information is extremely sensitive. These budgets are frequently managed by outside agencies, and if they are not secured, they may be used for malicious purposes such as the creation of defamatory advertisements or illegal data access. It is imperative for organizations to strictly regulate access configurations, utilizing Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) mechanisms to promptly notify administrators when users display unusual behavior.
- Extra Sensitive Information
Prospect and customer data, which is kept and processed in SaaS databases like CRM systems, Marketing Automation Hubs, and Sales Development Representative (SDR) tools, is a major source of information for marketing departments.
It is crucial to protect this sensitive data, which calls for strict access controls, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and ongoing observation of internal user behavior.
- Linked Applications
A vast range of interconnected applications are used by marketing teams to support their day-to-day activities. These include ad optimization apps, calendar apps, project management tools, video conferencing plugins, and design. To access company data, each of these apps asks for varying levels of permission, some of which are fairly invasive. Visibility is necessary for organizations to calculate the risk posed by these applications.
Using a SaaS Security Posture Management Solution to Safeguard Marketing Apps
The secret to effective and productive work is SaaS apps. Since the marketing department has the final say over maintaining the brand, any possible data breach or leak is a concern not only for the company as a whole but also for them.
Security teams can collaborate with Marketing to guarantee the security of these applications by utilizing SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platforms. Sensitive data is protected, strict access controls are enforced throughout the SaaS stack, and users both internal and external are monitored and managed by SSPMs. All marketing stakeholders will continue to be effective and productive, and no operational workflows will be interrupted with the correct SSPM solution.
