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According to Gartner's cloud transformation market trends and public cloud spending forecasts, it is estimated that by 2024, approximately 60% of application spending will move from on-premise to cloud, and global SaaS spending will total over $230 billion.

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Furthermore, it is estimated that 30% of organizations will rely solely on SaaS applications for critical and critical workflows by 2025, and in line with these market trends, they will continue to adopt SaaS applications without active IT intervention.

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Shadow IT occurs when departments or individuals adopt SaaS without IT management. Shadow IT has negative consequences in terms of software management consistency, compliance, and cost savings. Unmanaged SaaS is very risky. As a result, the importance of SaaS governance has been highlighted.

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This post Gartner Research (How to establish Effective SaaS Governance)Refer to why SaaS governance is important and suggests approaches to establishing SaaS governance.

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Why SaaS governance matters

SaaS governance is a process and practice established to identify, control, manage, and mitigate the use of SaaS applications being used within an organization. The focus is on providing a framework to maintain the efficiency and compliance of the SaaS stack.

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SaaS applications are IT assets that require proper management on an ongoing basis rather than a one-off project. However, most SaaS purchases are often introduced for the purpose of using the required functionality immediately without considering long-term issues.

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Without a SaaS governance framework, shadow IT issues arise. IT departments can be unaware of spending and technology stack inefficiencies, and increase the risk of cybersecurity and privacy compliance violations.

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According to an IBM report, the average amount of damage suffered by Korean companies from security breaches amounts to 4.334 billion won. By 2027, organizations that fail to centrally manage the SaaS lifecycle are expected to be 5 times more vulnerable to security incidents or data loss due to misconfigurations.

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3 things you must know to establish SaaS governance

Here's what Gartner proposed as an approach to building SaaS governance:

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1. Approve all SaaS usage through a defined process

IT departments cannot automatically reject SaaS requests, but they must work with business stakeholders to create flexible and practical collaborative processes. For example, if there is an account that has not logged in to a specific SaaS for 3 months, it is possible to establish a data-based process by understanding employees' SaaS usage status, such as recovering the account and allowing the account to use SaaS without a separate procedure if the person in charge of each SaaS has been designated and approved.

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2. Assigning responsibilities for SaaS

If the IT department does not have responsibility and management for a specific SaaS application, the owner of that SaaS application will be the manager or department leader of that particular team. As the number of SaaS used within enterprises has increased, it has become almost impossible for IT departments to manage all SaaS on a daily basis. The future of SaaS management will be a way for IT departments to manage everything from a central console and assign intermediate management systems to appropriate departments and personnel. Therefore, it is necessary to define the relevant R&R well.

• Application owner: This is usually the department head who pays for SaaS and explicitly agrees to accept any remaining risk.
• Application manager: Usually a business engineer, responsible for creating/maintaining/deleting accounts and properly handling data from deleted accounts.
• Power users: can provide support such as resetting passwords.
• Support: Notifies the IT department or SaaS vendor when issues occur, and is responsible for customization or integration tasks that require sophisticated work.

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3. Comprehensive cloud application inventory management

The established policy relating to the use of SaaS must include that the IT department officially approves the use of SaaS through the IT department and that the IT department can track usage. At a minimum, information about the type and name of the SaaS application, the owner of that SaaS, data classification and criticality, contract details, documented risk classification, risk assessment and decision-making processes, and a list of other services or applications integrated with the SaaS service must be traceable.

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Using security tools to effectively monitor access and enforce appropriate policies to protect data stored in cloud applications has become more important. Security tools such as Access Management (AM), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), SaaS Security Management Platforms (SSPM), SaaS Management Platforms (SMP), and Backup tools can be used to maintain the security of cloud environments.

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Step-by-Step SaaS Governance

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1. Start using SaaS

Choose and buy the right SaaS for your business by comparing features, pricing, and technical support. You should consider not only one-time costs, but also all ongoing costs, such as initial integration and expansion tasks through the introduction of SaaS. Create the ability to get the most out of SaaS and optimize spending using the right tools, processes, and people.

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Every SaaS must integrate with existing enterprise identity and access management (IAM) solutions and have clear goals for recovery. For applications with sensitive data, a plan must be developed to deal with failures caused by SaaS vendors.

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2. Ongoing SaaS management

SaaS applications require ongoing management. IT or business departments must respond flexibly to changes and support SaaS with an agile approach. Manage vendor risk and control licenses according to the requirements of actual SaaS users. Additionally, the requirements for users to access SaaS must be validated and associated processes created and maintained. Additionally, compliance management, user risk management, data backup, SaaS application performance monitoring, and SaaS portfolio management are required.

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3. Lifecycle management

Backup operations are required for SaaS service termination and service deprovisioning. Migrating data between SaaS services can be a complicated process. An SMP or cloud migration platform can support migration between common SaaS applications. Additionally, internal agreements and policies must be established for data destruction and storage. Determine requirements to ensure that data destruction is appropriate, and ensure sufficient time to properly process the data.

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At the end

The primary purpose of SaaS governance is to reduce risk within an organization, reduce costs, and ensure effective investments. Does your business currently use SaaS? It's time to think about SaaS governance to build, maintain, and manage an efficient and effective technology stack.

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👉 Inquire about SaaS governance