Why Controlling Access to SaaS is Important
As the adoption of cloud computing technologies continues to accelerate rapidly, SaaS-based offerings are exploding to help fill gaps in the flexibility, agility, and scalability of many legacy solutions. Some sources expect the market for these products to reach two hundred billion by 2024. And specific services like access controls for data are emerging.
For organizations aiming to produce, monetize, and leverage data assets without compromising compliance, performance, or security, addressing access control needs is integral in keeping pace with the cloud’s scale and speed. In this article, we’ll cover some of the importance of its deployment. Continue reading to learn more.
Access control—what is it?
SaaS or software as a service is a cloud-based deployment method that enables users to use or connect with applications via external platforms like a software monetization solution. This service model streamlines maintenance and set-up concerns while allowing people to access the desired applications on-demand, regardless of location.
The architectures can either be single-tenant, which means every customer has their customizable but shareable software instance, or multi-tenant, which is the opposite. The latter tends to be more common in today’s businesses due to its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, ease of set-up, and simplicity in maintenance.
Access control refers to the solutions integrated within the existing structure of the cloud data to control those who can gain access to it and the actions they’re allowed to take. They can be self-managed, or data access controls requiring minimal maintenance and can run quickly. With that said, here are a few reasons why controlling access to SaaS is vital.
- Agility and flexibility. Agility and flexibility are some of the primary tenets for any SaaS-based platform, but their effect is multiplied through access control. These solutions enable users to implement, update, and dynamically update policies on data access across cloud computing data platforms, applications, locations, and services.
- Seamless scalability and implementation. Access control SaaS-based solutions separating policies from their platforms will allow you to create policies and enforce them on all cloud data channels. With a growing number of organizations implementing and adopting SaaS applications, having a solution for access control can make for a much more seamless experience.
- Minimal overhead. Compared to self-managed solutions, the host maintains the access control systems of SaaS. This minimizes the burden of keeping pace with the infrastructure, upgrades, and maintenance costs. In addition, they roll out the patches and updates once they become available, ensuring that users all get access to the latest versions.
- Improved value of time. Since the SaaS platforms on access controls are created for quick deployment, the data teams can get things running faster than they otherwise would have done through a self-managed approach.
Conclusion
When all’s said and done, controlling access can help organizations keep data secure over the cloud and scale and streamline its use efficiently. Therefore, practices and solutions must be in place for access control, especially for businesses that mainly use cloud computing in their operations.