Client-Side SaaS
Cybersecurity

When you’re offering software or providing technical services to clients and customers, the last thing you want is for your own website to be compromised.

For many companies working in SaaS, network security is not as high a priority as it should be. Instead of focusing on their own SaaS data security, they leave critical areas of their website undefended, opening themselves and their customers up to the potential theft of their data.

For SaaS companies, this is a particularly potent threat, as, in addition to customer data, their proprietary intellectual property is also at risk. Were that to be stolen, they could lose their competitive advantage.

Additionally, there are many subtle attacks that a threat actor can set in motion that negatively impact website and web application performance, causing lags and downtime that alienate customers and negatively impact search engine rankings.

One industry report released in 2021 found that 86% of companies had been compromised by a successful cyberattack, a figure that’s a 5.5% increase from last year. While there are many methods that bad actors use to carry out these cyberattacks, client-side threats typically don’t get as much attention as their server-side counterparts.

SaaS Cybersecurity
Threats &
Vulnerabilities

​​Existing client-side cybersecurity products don’t often live up to the needs of an evolving attack space. This is true even for those businesses in the SaaS industry.

To help your technology and SaaS company improve its client-side security posture, it’s essential to learn about the variety of SaaS cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats that you could face. By familiarizing yourself with these potential areas and methods of attack, you can determine the best way to shore up existing vulnerabilities.

Distributed Denial-of-Service
(DDoS) Attack

A DDoS attack is a common assault mounted against a website or web-based application. The goal is to disrupt the company’s server with an ongoing stream of deceptive internet traffic. This traffic enters through the webpage and overwhelms the server, leaving legitimate customers and clients unable to access your website or other web-based assets in a timely manner

JavaScript Injection Attack

If you aren’t currently offering adequate security to the client-side of your website or web application, bad actors can easily gain access to your information. This is known as a JavaScript injection attack. From there, it’s simple for them to change their values, so they can harvest sensitive data from your customers.

XML External Entity Injection

The XML external entity injection is a vulnerability that could potentially allow bad actors to bypass your inadequate SaaS network security and view the contents of your server file system. If you have proprietary code, this could allow hackers to reverse-engineer or copy it so that they can use it themselves.

An ongoing lack of SaaS cloud security

Another vulnerability that continues to be problematic for many technology and SaaS companies is the widespread adoption of cloud solutions without a corresponding rise in SaaS security for cloud computing.

Despite the increased reliance on cloud solutions to support remote and hybrid workers, IT security spending has remained flat over the last four years—a troubling indication that even though our needs are changing, we aren’t yet able to offer security that matches our current cloud usage.

SaaS Cloud
Security Solutions

There are a variety of methods that technology and SaaS companies can use to combat the threats we discussed above.

Keep website plugins and
third-party apps up to date

Too many SaaS companies put all their focus on improving security for their SaaS products and don’t think about how their own website or web application could be making them vulnerable.

To safeguard your site and offer customers maximum protection, ensure that you keep your website plugins and third-party apps up to date. This keeps a strong security perimeter active around your site and blocks any malicious attempts to gain access to your internal server or code.

Set up robust internal
security policies

No one wants to be targeted for a DDoS or JavaScript injection attack, but as the statistics show, these occurrences are becoming more common by the day. Being proactive with your security is valuable, but it also helps to have internal security policies in place that dictate how your company will handle these incidents once identified.

Feroot’s client-side
security products

One of the best ways to improve your security posture overall is to invest in dedicated solutions and products that can protect the client-side of your web assets. Feroot offers two products that serve this purpose—Inspector and PageGuard.

Inspector

Inspector is a tool that simulates real user behavior, allowing it to identify any unusual scripts or unauthorized actions within your JavaScript web assets.

PageGuard

PageGuard runs continuously in the background of your web asset, deploying security permissions and policies that protect you from malicious third-party scripts and malware.

Learn More About Feroot’s Approach
to Client-Side SaaS Cybersecurity