Legacy SSPM is Dead. Why You Need SSPM+

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solutions emerged at the dawn of the 2020s to solve a critical problem: modern organizations were using multiple SaaS applications but Security teams had no visibility into the configurations. For security teams, managing permissions, access controls, and authentication policies meant toggling between different applications, each with their own unique settings, and reading “how to’s” to understand best practices for each one.

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That is, until SSPM hit the scene. SSPM allows security teams to manage and control SaaS posture for multiple apps in one place. Here’s what SSPM was designed to do:

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1. Configuration Monitoring: Scans SaaS applications to identify security misconfigurations, such as overly permissive sharing settings or disabled security controls, as well as compliance violations.
2. Remediation Guidance: Provides recommended actions to fix identified misconfigurations and security gaps.
3. Continuous Assessment: Regularly checks for drift from secure configurations as SaaS applications update their features and settings.
4. Access Reviews: Identify excessive user permissions and unused accounts across SaaS applications.
5. Centralized Management: Offers centralized visibility into the security posture across multiple SaaS applications.
6. SaaS-to-SaaS Visibility: Provides insight into what apps your apps are connected to and how they’re sharing data.

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SSPM offered a valuable solution to a critical problem. It gave security teams control over their SaaS deployments and made managing configurations much simpler.

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The SaaS Landscape Changes

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Since 2020, the SaaS landscape has changed dramatically driven by three trends.

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Remote Work

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The COVID-19 pandemic boosted remote work and reliance on SaaS applications. Zoom alone increased revenue by 5x between 2018 and 2020, and the average growth rate for annualized spending on SaaS by companies was 58% from 2023 to 2024. SaaS applications proliferated. In 2020, the average company used 80 SaaS applications and today that number is closer to 500.

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Increasing SaaS Integrations

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SaaS environments have become increasingly interconnected. SaaS apps establish connections with other apps via APIs, OAuth, webhooks, or native connectors provided by SaaS providers. This allows them to exchange data, automate workflows, and enhance functionality. 

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Today, the highly integrated nature of SaaS makes platforms more valuable. One report found that 90% of B2B buyers look for a vendor’s ability to integrate with their existing stack when making buying decisions.

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GenAI Adoption Surges

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In 2023 ChatGPT released its large language model (LLM) to consumers, and the whole world changed. Suddenly, busy professionals could accelerate content development and streamline tasks all by typing up a simple prompt. Other LLMs like Jasper and Claude followed suit, as well as AlphaCode specifically designed for software developers and tools like Napkin AI and Deep AI are adept at graphics creation. Suddenly, the race was on for companies to integrate GenAI into products and services.

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Today, nearly every SaaS provider has introduced native GenAI capabilities into their offerings. Canva and Adobe offer text-to-graphics AI features, ServiceNow and Zendesk offer workflow automation and GenAI powered chatbots, and Microsoft and Google offer AI copilots that enhance productivity by analyzing unstructured data across their offerings.

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New SaaS Security Challenges

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These three trends have fundamentally transformed the SaaS security landscape. However, it’s created five types of SaaS sprawl that traditional SSPM tools struggle to address:

• App sprawl: companies are constantly adopting new apps that are continuously updating and forming SaaS-to-SaaS connections.
• AI sprawl: from GenAI to Agentic AI and copilots, the proliferation of AI in SaaS apps creates more doorways for data exposure.
• Configuration sprawl: the multitude of configurations, users, and permissions in SaaS environments is virtually impossible to manage and maintain.
• Identity sprawl: as more users are added to SaaS apps, it becomes impossible for Security teams to track and manage access privileges, inactive accounts, and SSO enforcement.
• Data sprawl: data gets copied, pasted, and accessed through new pathways, increasing the chance of exposure.

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These five types of sprawl have created what we call the SaaS Security Gap—the growing distance between what legacy security tools can protect and what's getting away unprotected.

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SSPM Reaches its Tipping Point

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Today’s SaaS ecosystems look nothing like they did 5 years ago. What was once a manageable collection of core platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft has exploded into sprawling systems of hundreds, in some cases thousands, of interconnected applications. Generative AI has added a layer of complexity, embedding itself throughout multiple touchpoints in our workflows and constantly ingesting our business information. And let’s not forget about shadow apps: apps being used without IT or Security knowledge. Our recent report found that organizations have 261 unauthorized apps on average. Even if these apps may appear less critical at first glance, they still could be exchanging data with business critical apps or ingesting it via AI capabilities.

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Today, legacy SSPM can’t keep up with SaaS sprawl. The SaaS Security Gap is getting wider, far exceeding the breaking point of acceptable risk. 

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Here are all the things happening in your SaaS that legacy SSPMs don’t account for:

• Shadow apps: who’s using them, how they’re authenticating, and what apps they’re connected to.
• Shadow AI: AI assistant and agents, who is using them, and what access privileges they have.
• New apps: the posture of new apps you’ve recently added as well as behavioral heuristics and SaaS-to-SaaS intelligence.
• New identities: new identities are constantly being added to your apps in the form of human identities and non-human identities, like other apps and service accounts.
• Configuration drifts: the way your configurations change over time as apps release new settings and features.
• Live attacks: while SSPMs alert on a potential incident due to security policies in place, they fail to detect suspicious activity on an identity level, like impossible travel or unusual login patterns.
• Identity & access drift: access permissions that may be risky, privilege creep, or inactive/underutilized accounts. 
• SaaS-to-SaaS: Legacy SSPMs can identify misconfigured third-party apps, but they don't understand risky connections like OAuth risks.
• Data context: If the data isn't critical, the alert shouldn't be critical either. Legacy SSPMs can't use data context to inform alert prioritization.

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Legacy SSPM isn't taking into account the whole picture because sprawl is causing SaaS environments to constantly shift. SaaS is getting away from security teams, and it’s not because security teams aren’t working hard. It’s because their tools were built for a different era.

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SSPM Configuration Management Limitations

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While legacy SSPMs focus on configuration management, they still have weaknesses in that area. Many SSPMs perform scheduled checks instead of real-time enforcement, leaving security gaps. They generalize security controls across platforms, often missing complex, app-specific settings. While SSPMs align with compliance frameworks, compliance doesn’t always mean security, leading to unnecessary alerts.

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What is SSPM+?

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SSPM+ is the next revolution in SSPM. It covers not only existing apps you know about, but also new apps as soon as they hit your infrastructure. It offers visibility into the entire SaaS lifecycle, and adjusts as your environment changes and grows. It alerts based on total SaaS context, rather than static policies and thresholds.

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Here’s what SSPM+, part of the Dynamic SaaS Security Platform by Reco, brings to the table that was missing in SSPM:

• Discovers shadow apps: know about new apps the moment they are deployed. Understand who is using them, when, and how they’re authenticating.
• Discovers embedded AI: understand what AI tools and copilots are being used in your environment and what levels of access they have.
• Rapid support for new apps: Reco’s SaaS App Factory™ releases support for new apps per customer requests in days, not quarters.
• Broader app coverage: Reco releases feature-full support for 3-5 new apps per week, currently supporting over 160 apps.
• SaaS-to-SaaS risks: Maps app-to-app connections, OAuth risks, third-party integrations.
• Third-party and fourth-party risks: spot if your data or resources are being shared beyond the third-party boundary by identifying anomalies, such as unusual access patterns, suspicious geolocations, or unexpected IP addresses.
• Data context: Reco takes into consideration how sensitive data is, when ranking alerts. Although it's API-based, it can identify categorized data based on data owners, who has access, location, and behaviors using AI.
• Full SaaS context: advanced analytics around persona, actions, interactions and relationships to other users powers alerts on exposure from misconfigurations, overpermissioned users, compromised accounts, and risky user behavior.

SSPM+: Part of the Dynamic SaaS Security Platform

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Today’s SaaS environments are getting away from their SSPMs, which means it’s time for a new approach. SSPM+ extends beyond static configuration management to provide comprehensive visibility, contextual intelligence, and automated response capabilities across your entire SaaS ecosystem, as it changes and grows.

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SSPM+ is one solution in the Dynamic SaaS Security Platform, by Reco, which includes:

• SaaS and AI Discovery
• SSPM+
• Identity and Access Governance
• Threat Detection and Response

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Ready for SaaS that can keep up? Learn more about the Dynamic SaaS Security Platform by Reco, the first and only SSPM+. Contact us to schedule a demo or watch a pre-recorded demo here.