Software as a service

1. Software as a service

Imagine you’re on the cloud cybersecurity team of a small tech company. As the business grows, you investigate software as a service, SaaS, as an option to help manage your workloads. Let’s review what SaaS offers to better understand what this service can do for the company. SaaS is a cloud-hosted application software accessed over the internet through a web browser or mobile app. The SaaS model is ideal for organizations who might not have the staff or expertise to manage infrastructure or build their own applications. Customer responsibilities include securing their data and access policies. That’s it. Gmail is an example of a SaaS product. Google manages the Gmail application and all of the underlying infrastructure. Gmail users manage their emails and login access. Most SaaS offerings operate using a subscription model. If more or less capacity is needed, customers can purchase a different tier that will adjust to the workload. For example, if Gmail users have large amounts of saved emails with attachments, they may want to upgrade to a tier with more storage. With the CSP managing and maintaining the infrastructure, operating systems, and storage, CSP customers have far less overhead. Overhead is the use of excessive hardware or personnel resources to accomplish a task. Organizations adopting SaaS only pay for using the software. So, customers don’t have to worry about paying for and maintaining the equipment and servers needed to support the workloads. One advantageous aspect of SaaS is the instant use of apps. Customers can access most SaaS applications online on a web browser, which eliminates the need to download software. So, SaaS applications are globally available. For example, you can access software for work while traveling, or retrieve photos from the cloud. The SaaS service model has much to offer, but there are also considerations organizations should take when using SaaS. One of the biggest things to consider is shadow IT. Shadow IT tends to occur when employees or teams use SaaS products without getting approval from IT teams first. This practice is a concern for IT staff because those products might be inadequately secured, leading to more vulnerabilities and security issues for the organization. To summarize what we covered in this video, SaaS is ideal for those searching for a solution that requires minimal maintenance and security responsibilities. Now that’s downright practical!

2. Let's practice!

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