How Self-Hosted Solutions Address SaaS Security Concerns

As unfortunate as it is, we find ourselves in an era where data breaches make headlines with alarming frequency.

The cybersecurity landscape constantly evolves, with threat actors finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. As security measures become more sophisticated, so too do their malicious counterparts. Recent data breaches involving major SaaS providers highlight inherent risks assumed when entrusting sensitive data to third-party platforms.

This article explores how self-hosted solutions can offer enhanced security and control compared to traditional SaaS offerings.

The Ripple Effect

One of the most concerning aspects of SaaS security breaches is their potential for cascading effects. The 2023 Okta breach is a stark example of how compromising a single SaaS provider can lead to a domino effect, potentially impacting numerous other organizations.

In this incident, attackers gained access to Okta’s customer support system, exploiting it to extract session tokens from multiple high-profile customers. This breach affected Okta and put its clients, including 1Password, BeyondTrust, and Cloudflare, at risk. The incident highlights how a single point of failure in a SaaS ecosystem can have far-reaching consequences across multiple organizations.

Perils of Shared Access

Another significant risk associated with SaaS solutions is the increased attack surface due to shared access. The 2024 Snowflake campaign illustrates this; in this incident, threat actors used stolen credentials to access approximately 165 companies’ accounts on the platform.

The breach wasn’t the result of sophisticated hacking techniques but rather the exploitation of exposed, legitimate credentials that were either bought or found. The more people access your keys, the higher the chances of your company falling victim to a breach. When multiple organizations share the same platform, one’s security practices can impact all others.

The 2023 Microsoft data leak is a prime example of how even tech giants can fall victim to such oversights. In June 2023, a Microsoft researcher accidentally shared a URL for an Azure Blob store in a public GitHub repository while contributing to an open-source AI learning model.

This incident, discovered by analysts at cloud security specialists Wiz.io, exposed a staggering 38TB of Microsoft’s internal data. The scope of this breach included backups of employee workstations containing sensitive personal information, credentials, secret keys, and over 30,000 internal Teams messages.

The culprit here was an “overly permissive” shared access signature (SAS) token accidentally disclosed by a Microsoft employee. The token was valid until 2051, potentially exposing the data for 28 years if not discovered and addressed.

The Self-Hosted Advantage

In light of these risks, self-hosted solutions are gaining traction as a more secure alternative. Platforms like Batteries Included are making self-hosting more accessible and manageable. Let’s go over some ways self-hosted solutions can enhance your security posture:

Unlike cloud-based environments where a single misconfiguration can expose vast amounts of data, self-hosted solutions offer complete data isolation. With Batteries Included, for instance, each customer operates within their own data silo. This architecture significantly reduces the risk of a breach affecting multiple organizations simultaneously or exposing unrelated data.
Self-hosted SaaS applications are deployed on owned infrastructure, ensuring that sensitive data and information are never inadvertently shared or exposed through misconfigurations in shared environments. This arrangement enables stronger data security and facilitates self-regulated compliance, ensuring total control over data access and sharing.
Self-hosting puts you in complete control of access permissions. You decide who has access to what without being subject to the security decisions of a third-party provider.
Self-hosting allows for the implementation of security measures that align perfectly with your organization’s requirements and risk profile. Every aspect of your security setup can be customized and optimized, from network configurations to encryption standards.
Not all security incidents are state actors or ransomware gangs — disgruntled employees can also pose a serious threat. However, getting insights into what happened on a SaaS solution can be very difficult. When self-hosting, you have access to all the telemetry and can use that to investigate and fix security issues yourself.

Overcoming Traditional Self-Hosting Challenges

Historically, the primary arguments against self-hosting have been the need for ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and configuration management. However, modern platforms are changing this narrative:

Scalability Solutions: While scaling a self-hosted service has traditionally been challenging, modern platforms like Batteries Included offer streamlined and automatic solutions to these complexities, similar to a managed SaaS.
Automated Updates and Maintenance: New self-hosted offerings help automate various updates and security patches, ensuring your infrastructure stays current without requiring manual intervention.
Streamlined Configuration Management: More advanced and easy-to-use tooling reduces the risk of misconfigurations that could lead to security vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

As the frequency and sophistication of SaaS attacks continue to grow, the security advantages of self-hosted solutions become increasingly apparent. By offering greater control, customization, and isolation, self-hosting provides a robust alternative to traditional SaaS models.

Platforms like Batteries Included make self-hosting more accessible than ever, automating many of the traditional pain points associated with managing your infrastructure. As organizations prioritize data security and sovereignty, a shift towards self-hosted solutions represents a pragmatic reevaluation of how we approach data management and security.