DevOps Security Best Practices for Your SaaS Application

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With the rampant growth and popularity of SaaS (software as a service) solutions and various other cloud-based applications, a lot of organizations have become concerned about data security.

While most organizations have already migrated their data to cloud spaces and started using SaaS (Software as a service) solutions to make things easier and faster, they haven’t really taken any particular steps to maintain their SaaS application security.

Security is obviously a big concern. If the hacker gets access to your data stored online, the repercussions can be huge. This is where DevOps security comes to play.

What is DevOps security?

DevOps security is a collective name used to describe a number of security steps taken by organizations to keep their data secure. These steps are taken incorporating multiple elements such as DevOps security tools, the business stakeholders, and various dedicated security services. In this blog, we will discuss some of the best DevOps security practices.

DevOps Security Best Practices for Your SaaS Application

Data Encryption

Data encryption has become inevitable for ensuring data security today rather than a choice. Your website is the virtual face of your business venture. People evaluate your business by looking at what your website offers and how it handles your data.

To encrypt the data shared and stored on your website, you must buy SSL certificate from trusted brands and install on your website. This will change your website status from a non-secure HTTP to a secure ‘HTTPS’ environment.

Back up your data for disaster recovery

You can’t be sure that your data will be secure on the cloud. When security breaches happen, hackers will either corrupt the data or delete it together or steal them. In any case, you need to get access back to the data as early as possible.

Having a backup of your data will solve the problem to a great extent. It is possible now to keep your data backed up and stored safely by paying some extra money for the storage space.

Use VPN

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is a very practical way to protect yourself from malicious hackers. When you use a VPN for accessing a site, the connection between your web browser and the server will get encrypted first. This will mean no hackers will be able to tap on the data you input to the server through your website browser.

When you use a SaaS solution or download software from a website, it is highly recommended to use a VPN to encrypt the data. Similarly, before downloading software solutions from unknown websites, you must verify whether the software is reliable. If it can be trusted, it should come with a trust pass, for instance, Comodo Code Signing Certificate.

Keep everything updated

According to reports, security loopholes are mostly found with outdated frameworks and software. If you are a business depending excessively on SaaS, you must make sure that all your employees access it only from a device that has an updated operating system.

Equally important is the update status and reliability of the web browser being used to access the service. According to reports, the majority of the cyber attacks on businesses were reported in companies that used outdated or pulled versions of Windows operating systems such as Windows XP or Windows 7.

Network Hardening

Network hardening is one of the most essential steps to take to increase SaaS application security. The first step you must take in this regard is configuring your firewall security. As part of this, execute the following steps:

  • Prioritise services based on their necessity and remove the ones that are not necessary.
  • Keep a close watch on your network traffic and implement encryption
  • Add security to remote access points
  • Remove or disable less frequently used open ports, protocols, and access lists
  • Practice network segmentation. Network segmentation is an effective security practice where you divide your network into several subnets for easy and quick monitoring.
  • Use a VPN for all kinds of confidential online transactions or sensitive data accesses.

Use Network Firewalls

It is highly recommended to install a network firewall to keep your browsing safe. The firewall, as the name indicates, will act as a boundary preventing insecure traffics. There are several network firewalls to choose from for your business purpose. Before choosing one, try to study your requirements and how much the firewall can offer you and make an appropriate choice.

Diffuse DDoS Attacks via CDN

DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attacks do happen when a hacker maliciously tries to interrupt a website or SaaS connection between the end user and the service where it is hosted. As a business that depends heavily on a cloud-based service, you can’t really afford the inconveniences that it causes.

What can be done to address this? With the help of an effective content delivery network (CDN), you can diffuse DDoS attacks to a great extent. When you use this DevOps security option while using a cloud service, it will monitor the connection and rightly intervenes and diffuse any attempts of hackers to initiate a DDoS.

Likewise, CDN works as an effective tool that can effectively boost the speed of your application delivery. As a result of this, you will experience better performance while using the SaaS application.

Utilize Intrusion Detection System (IDS)

Another great DevOps security best practice is using an Intrusion Detection System or IDS. With the help of this advanced security protocol, your network administrator can easily keep track of the security threats and vulnerabilities that it may come to face.

It keeps a close watch on the network traffic and generates periodical reports and sends them to the network administrators for review. To a great extent, IDS itself will prevent or mitigate the threats.

Wrapping Up

Given the critical nature of data accessed and shared through SaaS, you can’t take data security for granted when using such services. The DevOps Security best practices discussed here would help you keep SaaS Application Security fully under your control.