SaaS apps are rapidly reshaping the way business is done. Now integrated into all aspects of daily life, users are constantly seeking ways to enhance productivity. This increasingly means adopting new apps whenever needed and forgoing the traditional IT onboarding processes. This democratization of IT is great for users but introduces a massive new governance burden to already overworked security and identity and access management (IAM) teams.
To effectively manage the volume, we must rethink how we support identity governance in the face of democratized IT. It’s essential to shift towards a democratized solution architecture that empowers users while ensuring security and reducing risk to the business. Additionally, adopting a shared security architecture for SaaS is crucial to support a truly shared responsibility model. The current methods of centrally managed integrations stem from the CSPM paradigm, where the number of vendors to integrate with was low, well-known, and required advanced knowledge and administrative access. This approach doesn’t scale with modern SaaS adoption, necessitating a new strategy to gain visibility and control.
Enter Savvy’s Zero-Touch Integration (ZTI), a revolutionary client-side integration approach that leverages patented technology to eliminate the need for manual configuration steps to integrate and manage SaaS apps and their risky identities. ZTI technology ensures seamless implementation of key identity management functions such as access controls, account discovery, identity lifecycle management, and continuous compliance monitoring —without requiring any coding or technical expertise.
What Is Zero-Touch Integration?
At its core, zero-touch client-side integration is a method that allows you to discover and effortlessly integrate hidden, unmanaged SaaS apps into your IAM stack. This process leverages Savvy’s comprehensive SaaS visibility and control capabilities to bypass the usual manual setup, allowing teams to instantly gain awareness and governance for Shadow IT. Think of it as the plug-and-play for SaaS integrations, where the complexities of prior knowledge of the app, acquiring admin privileges, and technical expertise for the app are entirely removed from the equation.
How Does Zero-Touch Integration Work?
Imagine signing up for a new SaaS app, and boom, your team can instantly detect the app’s use, identify the admin, inventory all accounts associated with the app, and validate the accounts’ security posture without lifting a single finger. That’s the magic of ZTI.
Behind the scenes, ZTIs are a capability of the Savvy browser extension. It leverages already established sessions on the client side to interrogate the app, revealing its security posture. This information is then relayed via the browser extension back to the Savvy platform, where it is used to enrich and update Savvy’s continuous and real-time inventory of SaaS apps, identities, and risks.
Advantages and Capabilities of Savvy’s Zero-Touch Integration
We believe that the only way to effectively manage the identity lifecycle in a modern, democratized IT world, is to disrupt the traditional approach to app management. IT, Security, and Identity teams simply don’t have the resources to keep up with the volume of previous paradigms. Savvy’s ZTI empowers teams with the visibility and control they need to provide identity governance over SaaS while reducing friction for everyone involved and embracing the open model of business-led SaaS adoption.
Extend and Enhance Identity Visibility
Zero-touch integration provides continuous, real-time visibility into the identity landscape of your SaaS environment. This means that, for the first time ever, you can inventory accounts in unmanaged SaaS, as well as identify weak, reused, shared, and compromised credentials, detect issues like SSO bypass, and spot misconfigured MFA. Enhancing identity visibility is crucial in proactively managing security risks and ensuring compliance.
Gain Visibility into Shadow IT and Curb SaaS Sprawl
Savvy simplifies the integration process, provides clear oversight, and ensures a centralized method for integrating SaaS apps, which helps organizations maintain control over their software environments, thereby reducing the risks associated with SaaS sprawl and shadow IT. Companies immediately gain comprehensive visibility into apps, identities, privileges, security hygiene, and more, without manual configurations and management.
Discover and Reduce App-to-App Connections
For supported integrations, ZTI takes visibility a step further. The functionality also discovers non-human identities (NHI) like service accounts and OAuth tokens used to establish connections between interconnected apps. While other solutions offer this visibility for managed and sanctioned apps and accounts, it has been extremely difficult to achieve when shadow SaaS is combined with shadow accounts to interconnect apps. These critical insights can then be mapped back to the appropriate identity and further used to surface hidden and toxic risks lurking in the environment.
Beyond the visibility benefits, there’s a core reduction of risk when using ZTIs versus traditional server-side API integrations. By automating and streamlining the integration process, ZTIs reduce the number of non-human identities and accounts and access grants that could serve as the genesis of a security breach.
Govern SaaS and Identity Security at Scale
As businesses grow and their SaaS environments become more complex, managing identity security manually can become untenable. Zero-touch integrations are inherently scalable, extending security visibility and control across new applications and services without additional configuration overhead and burdening an already overworked team.
Modernize Your IAM Security with Less Effort
Savvy ZTIs are more than a major technological advancement—they represent a paradigm shift in how SaaS apps and identities are managed. By eliminating the need for prior knowledge of SaaS apps, the manual setup, admin privileges, and app expertise, we empower teams to efficiently discover, govern, and secure managed and unmanaged SaaS apps and their identities. ZTIs will continue to evolve and support new functionality over time, with additional ZTIs introduced regularly.
Our patented patent-pending technology stands out as a beacon of innovation in a world where efficiency, identity security, and user experience are paramount. Say goodbye to mountains of identity tech debt and the complexities of traditional app integrations. And say hello to a future where your SaaS apps work harmoniously, effortlessly, and securely.
Take charge of SaaS identity security, making it part of your overall IT organization rather than an exception. Schedule a demo to see Savvy in action.
