How to Make Sure Your SaaS Product is a Safe One - Security Tips

As a SaaS product owner, you are already aware of how your clients are benefiting from your service. The main issue, however, is the reluctance of prospective clients in invest in your product because of their safety and security concerns. There are ways in which you can assure your clients that your Saas Product is a safe, cost-effective solution.

How to Guarantee Safe Software for Your Clients. Security Tips for Using a Saas Product in Practice:

The Company

As a company, you should provide the following safety features for your SaaS company. Firstly, ensure that you have a secure domain name and use an authoritative hosting provider. Disclose all data being collected in case of a possible breach. When choosing a secure hosting provider, you’ll look for the following features:

• Web hosting with RAID pre-installed. RAID is a special data protection system.

• Secure data centers with protective measures in case of emergency. Consider the location of the facility and whether they have power generators on site.

• 100% uptime as a part of the hosting service, or at least reimbursement for the possible downtime of your website.

• VPS and package services that include a manual reboot.

Additional project management services and tools should be secured and updated regularly. Project management services and tools such as Zoho Projects and Asana are good to use if you’re looking for a cost-effective solution.

Don’t share your company Wifi, and only allow guests to connect to an isolated network. List a public security report on your website that discloses how you will deal with bug reports or breaches.

An efficient, proactive way to deal with security is by setting up a bug bounty program. This allows external hackers to report vulnerabilities directly to the company, which allows your internal team to manage risk. Make sure that you have a security risk plan in place and an up to date inventory of company assets.

How Your Clients Should Educate Their Employees

As a SaaS product owner, it’s important to tell your clients in how they should be educating and managing their employees while utilizing your service.

The most important part of running your SaaS solutions is to educate the weakest link in your security chain. The individuals. When your employees grasp the importance of safety and learn how their actions could be detrimental, they will be more aware of their practices.

Employees should use 2-factor authentication on all services and software used. Protect your company’s assets as well as your employees’ privacy by encrypting all laptops and personal computers. Instruct them to have secure passcodes on their private phones that might contain company-sensitive data. Utilize password managers to ensure strong passwords to eliminate risk.

Security tips for Code and Infrastructure

Even though your developers are most likely to focus on the security aspect of it all; make sure that your company

• Checks basic website security

• Makes regular back-ups

• Operating systems are up to date

• Integrates a basic DDoS protection such as CloudFlare or CloudFront

• Only exposes your public API to the Internet

• Implements a solution to gather and archive logs

• Pull and review code regularly to assess security

• Makes use of code analysis tools such as Codacy

• Uses secure development life cycle to stick to best practices

• Tests the software regularly and look for vulnerabilities

Convincing Your Client

Keep in mind that your client might be wary of dealing with SaaS solutions, but explaining how your company deals with the security can put them at ease. Try to explain to them that risks involved with data management aren’t influenced by the location of the server. Whether it’s in-house or in another city.

Another valuable tip for SaaS Product owners is to prepare answers to the most common questions the client might have. Appointment-plus shares an informative list of questions that you might expect from your prospective client:

• How can I integrate your application with my current system?

• How much configuration of the SaaS application is possible?

• Do you assist with customization enquiries other than the existing preference settings?

• Do you have technical employees that can help with configuration and integration?

• How often do you innovate your SaaS solution?

• How robust is your API?

SaaS vendors are more likely to invest in better security, backup and maintenance systems than other small businesses or companies. So investing in your SaaS product can improve their current security. Web-based systems have more security measures in place than on-premise systems and they undergo strict security audits as well.