Many cloud incidents aren’t the result of sophisticated attacks, but of everyday missteps; misconfigurations, excessive access, or security controls that were overlooked or forgotten. These issues persist primarily in mature environments, as cloud and SaaS platforms change constantly while security is still too often treated as a one-time effort.
Industry leaders consistently reinforce the pattern: attackers exploit everyday weaknesses such as misconfigurations and weak credentials rather than needing exotic techniques.
What “Misconfiguration” Actually Means
Misconfiguration is any cloud or SaaS setting that increases exposure, weakens control, or violates intended policy. Common cloud misconfiguration patterns include:
- Over-permissive identities and policies: roles that can do far more than needed, broad wildcard permissions, unused permissions that accumulate over time.
- Exposed services: public endpoints, overly permissive security groups, services reachable directly via the internet when they shouldn’t be.
- Missing or weak detection: logging not enabled, audit trails incomplete, alerts not mapped to risk or integrated with SIEM.
- Risky defaults and drift: defaults left in place, or “known-good” settings that regress after IaC/CI/CD changes.
- Inconsistent controls: inconsistency across accounts/subscriptions/projects, security posture differs by environment, team, or business unit.
SaaS Misconfiguration is the same problem, in a different place
While posture is often looked at as a hyperscale cloud problem, SaaS shifts risk from infrastructure to tenant configuration, identity, and integrations. Typical SaaS misconfiguration patterns include:
- Weak identity posture: inconsistent MFA enforcement, legacy auth methods left enabled, risky conditional access gaps.
- Over-permissive app permissions: OAuth scopes too broad, third-party apps with persistent access, unused integrations that remain trusted.
- Unsafe tenant settings: sharing policies, external collaboration defaults, admin role sprawl.
- Visibility gaps: security teams don’t see what business owners enable, buy, or integrate.
Recent trends seem to show that SaaS breaches are increasingly driven by identity compromise, with attackers able to move laterally rapidly after initial access.
The Gaps in Traditional Security Controls
Traditional security controls are necessary, but they are not designed to manage configuration risk across modern cloud and SaaS environments.
- Endpoint and network tools don’t see configuration risk: They cannot identify overly permissive IAM roles, exposed cloud services, or risky SaaS tenant settings.
- Point-in-time audits don’t keep up with change: Cloud environments evolve daily through CI/CD pipelines, automation, and admin actions. Findings become outdated quickly as configurations drift.
- Native cloud and SaaS security controls are fragmented: Hyperscalers and SaaS providers offer security features, but these are typically scoped to individual services or tenants. They do not provide a unified, cross-environment view of posture, identity risk, or misconfiguration trends.
- Native controls assume correct configuration and ongoing attention: Built-in security capabilities are only effective if they are enabled, correctly configured, and continuously maintained. In practice, many remain partially enabled, inconsistently applied, or overridden over time.
Native and traditional security controls are valuable, but they are not posture management. Without continuous visibility, correlation, and prioritisation across cloud and SaaS, misconfiguration risk remains largely unmanaged.
The Need for Continuous Posture Management
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)
CSPM is how you continuously manage cloud configuration risk across accounts and environments in the hyperscale cloud, SSPM applies the same discipline to SaaS tenants, where configuration, identity, and integrations drive most outcomes. At a capability level, both focuse on:
- Continuous visibility of configurations.
- Detection of misconfigurations and risky settings.
- Identification of excessive permissions and IAM risk.
- Identification of risky third-party apps and over-scoped permissions.
- Monitoring for drift over time.
- Risk-based prioritization (fix what matters first).
- Ongoing monitoring of admin actions and configuration changes.
Attackers most often exploit basic misconfigurations and IAM weaknesses rather than advanced vulnerabilities.
Help AG’s Security Posture Assessments
Help AG’s cloud and SaaS posture assessments turn CSPM/SSPM findings into real operational outcomes by establishing a clear baseline, validating what controls are actually enabled and enforced, and aligning with industry standards and regulations. The result is a practical, prioritized remediation roadmap aligned to how the organization operates and designed to decrease risk and improve posture quickly.
Next steps
If you want to reduce real-world exposure quickly, start by answering these questions:
- Which cloud accounts are most exposed?
- Which SaaS tenants have weak identity or risky integrations?
- How quickly can you detect and fix drift after changes?
If you want a clear view of your cloud and SaaS posture and where misconfiguration risk exists, speak to one of our cloud security experts about an assessment.
