With unrivaled efficiency and scalability, SaaS applications have become a significant part of the workflow in countless industries. The SaaS model’s rapid expansion is both terrific and scary. While it has simplified many processes, its growth has also given rise to countless cyber threats.
As more businesses turn to cloud-based solutions for managing vital functions, resourceful and comprehensive security measures are more critical now than ever.
Data security and privacy rules and other compliances, such as HIPAA, ISO/IEC-27001, SOC 1, SOC 2, etc., generally require external SaaS penetration testing. This guide walks you through the process and factors to consider while choosing a SaaS pentesting provider.
What is SaaS Penetration Testing?
Though SaaS simplifies operations for others, they themselves operate on quite a complex infrastructure. A SaaS solution has much going on behind the scenes than what meets the eye. There are web interfaces, network, cloud, APIs, third-party integrations, base code, user roles, and several other inter-connected systems that make a SaaS solution what it is.
Maintaining & securing these SaaS components enterprise-wide is no easy task. Vulnerabilities creep up in one form or another. This is where SaaS penetration testing helps.
SaaS penetration testing is an in-depth evaluation of all components of a SaaS business to highlight & fix hidden security vulnerabilities in them. It also helps SaaS owners review the present security of their product, bridge existing security gaps, and identify improvement areas, while there still is time.
Benefits of SaaS Penetration Testing
SaaS pentesting helps protect companies across industries from fatal security risks.
Aside from protecting your data, as a SaaS company owner, you are bound by strict compliance regulations to secure your environment and prioritize customer data security. Some other ways that a pentest can benefit you are:
- Vulnerability Detection: Pentesting helps you detect and fix vulnerabilities across systems, applications, and networks, which prevents hackers from exploiting your system.
- Security Planning: It enables you to create a thorough security plan based on the test results to improve your security levels. This helps prevent future vulnerabilities from popping up.
- Compliance Requirements: Penetration testing helps you meet HIPAA, SOC2, ISO-27001, GDPR requirements, etc.
- Confidence & Trust: You build brand trust and loyalty by showing customers that you protect their data. Compliance certifications also help in this regard.
Why Astra is the best in pentesting?
- We’re the only company that combines automated & manual pentest to create a one-of-a-kind pentest platform.
- Vetted scans ensure zero false positives.
- Our intelligent vulnerability scanner emulates hacker behavior & evolves with every pentest.
- Astra’s scanner helps you shift left by integrating with your CI/CD.
- Our platform helps you uncover, manage & fix vulnerabilities in one place.
- Trusted by the brands you trust like Agora, Spicejet, Muthoot, Dream11, etc.
What to Expect From SaaS Penetration Testing?
Setting clear expectations from SaaS pentesting is crucial before the pentesting begins. Here’s what SaaS pentesting can and cannot cover:
SaaS Penetration Testing Can:
- Help you find and fix vulnerabilities in your environment via application and infrastructure testing. It tests web apps, cloud, source code, third-party integrations, devices, APIs, firewalls, etc.
- Improve your understanding of your current security posture and help you formulate a remediation plan to improve it.
- Help you comply with regulatory requirements.
SaaS Penetration Testing Can’t:
- Target security issues emanating from a need for more security education and awareness in the organization. However, it can identify and recommend fixes for on-site and host-based security vulnerabilities.
- Fix the discovered vulnerabilities. Security engineers usually report vulnerabilities with remediation steps but don’t fix them themselves.
- Test external services/APIs that your business uses unless explicitly mentioned.
- Perform DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) tests or stress-testing on the applications since many cloud providers, like AWS, forbid it.
What Should You Look for in a SaaS Penetration Testing Solution?
When looking for a SaaS penetration testing service, look for transparency, viability, time frame, methodology, trust, and security. Before you engage with the penetration testing team, you can also ask informed questions about the process, frequency of testing, type of support provided, certifications, customers, and case studies.
Besides these fundamental features, you should also look for a penetration testing service that provides you with:
- Easy reporting & management of vulnerabilities
- Detailed penetration testing report
- Fixing advice
- Re-tests.
5 Stages in SaaS Penetration Testing
SaaS penetration testing stages can be broken down into these five stages:
1. Pre-Engagement & Mapping Scope
The tester begins a SaaS penetration test by setting the right expectations and scope for the testing activity. This is important for the customer because it is the point for communicating goals, compliance needs, and the client’s expected results.
The penetration testing team uses the information collected in this stage to outline the testing methodology, discuss potential limitations, and provide cost estimates.
Clearly defining the scope means that testing is done thoroughly within applications, user roles, cloud infrastructure, APIs, and other integrations to handle massive complexity in a SaaS environment.
2. Vulnerability Assessment
After signing the agreement, the testing process starts with vulnerability assessments. This is where the tester scans the whole infrastructure for security vulnerabilities.
Although this is primarily an automated process, it is nonetheless highly crucial. The results of the vulnerability assessment direct the rest of the testing.
For an example of how it’s conducted, the following is the vulnerability assessment conducted by Astra’s Pentest Scanner:
3. Exploitation
The exploitation stage is the core step of penetration testing, where the identified vulnerabilities are actively challenged for their potential impact. It refers to simulating real-world scenarios of attacks against a system to know its resilience and the exact consequences in case of a successful breach.
Penetration testers use manual exploitation techniques, automated tools, and social engineering. For the social engineering step, the pentester simulates human interaction and tests for unauthorized access.
Successful exploitation could result in the detection of unauthorized systems access, data, or privileges. The information gathered is critical to the overall security posture and in creating appropriate remediation strategies.
4. Reporting & Collaboration
The next step in SaaS penetration testing is to document the found vulnerabilities. Along with the identified vulnerabilities, the tester should also report their impact, the steps to reproduce them, and the steps to fix the respective vulnerabilities.
At Astra, we go the extra mile to provide details like a vulnerability’s potential monetary loss, CVSS score, calculated risk score, PoCs, and selenium scripts, along with the necessary information.
Given the complex arrangement of a SaaS, continual two-way collaboration is an essential factor in remediation. An alternative to email collaboration is to collaborate over vulnerability management dashboards. It simplifies the whole process and cuts the remediation time for everyone involved.
5. Remediation & Certification
Remediation and certification are the last legs of SaaS penetration testing. Remediation here refers to the client fixing the reported vulnerabilities according to the suggested steps shared by the tester.
Next, the security team tests the implemented fixes and issues a certificate to the SaaS to confirm that the vulnerabilities are no longer a concern. A sample penetration testing certificate by Astra Security is shown below.
Fun fact: You can also make the Astra Pentest certificate publicly verifiable so your clients and partners can verify it, which helps you establish transparency and trust!
SaaS pentesting by Astra Security
Key Features:
- Platform: SaaS
- Pentest Capabilities: Continuous automated scans with 10,000+ tests and manual pentests
- Accuracy: Zero false positives (with vetted scans)
- Compliance Scanning: OWASP, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO27001, and SOC2
- Publicly Verifiable Pentest Certification: Yes
- Workflow Integration: Slack, JIRA, GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins, and more
- Price: Starting at $1999/yr
Astra Security provides complete VAPT packages that include SaaS penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. We evaluate all your systems, including networks, web applications, mobile applications, and APIs.
Our automated vulnerability scanner scans for vulnerabilities from the OWASP Top 10, SANS 25, and known CVEs, using over 10,000 test cases. This list of vulnerabilities is updated fortnightly to ensure all new and emerging vulnerabilities are noticed.
Our intuitive dashboard shows vulnerabilities discovered in real time along with their severity rankings to facilitate communication with the target’s development team and enable a more seamless patching technique.
With our specialized scans for regulatory standards like PCI-DSS, SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001, and HIPAA, we can assist you in achieving and maintaining compliance. Our vetted scans assure zero false positives, eliminating the waste of time and resources they usually cause.
You can also share our publicly verifiable certificate on your website to demonstrate your dependability and security-consciousness.
Astra Pentest is built by the team of experts that helped secure Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, and Buffer
Final Thoughts
SaaS solutions are clusters of complex systems & functions. Given the massive adoption of cloud-based SaaS solutions, paying attention to the cybersecurity risks associated with these services has become vital.
SaaS penetration testing helps you identify underlying security vulnerabilities in your SaaS solution. Organizations can protect sensitive data, maintain customer trust, and comply with industry regulations by identifying and addressing vulnerabilities within a SaaS application.
Asking the right questions while choosing a pentesting service can save you from missed vulnerabilities and expensive resources. Consider expertise, methodology, reporting capabilities, and cost when selecting a SaaS pentesting provider.
FAQs
1. What does SaaS stand for in security?
SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which refers to safety measures taken to secure cloud-based applications against cyber threats. While application management is the SaaS provider’s responsibility, the user is responsible for ensuring the data and accounts.
2. What is the approach towards SaaS security?
SaaS security refers to secure data and users within cloud applications through access controls, strong authentication, data encryption, and periodic security assessments. Therefore, such robust security practices allow an organization to try at least to reduce potential risks against data confidentiality.
3. What is the meaning of penetration testing in cloud security?
Cloud security penetration testing is the simulation of attacks against cloud environments that helps detect vulnerabilities. It allows for measuring an organization’s security posture, discovering weaknesses, and implementing proper countermeasures to protect sensitive data and systems against breaches.
What are the three types of penetration tests?
Penetration tests are of three types:
1. Black Box: Simulates an actual attack with zero system knowledge.
2. White Box: Provides in-depth analysis with full system access.
3. Gray Box: Lies between both of the above, with limited knowledge.
