Cybersecurity of SaaS Products Threats, Secure-by-Design Engineering, and Security Metrics for Continuous Assurance
Abstract
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) concentrates business-critical data and identity
workflows into always-on, internet-exposed systems, making it a prime target
for credential theft, API abuse, supply-chain compromise, and cloud-controlplane attacks. This paper develops a secure-by-design framework for SaaS that
integrates (i) governance and risk outcomes from NIST CSF 2.0, (ii) security
and privacy controls from NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 and ISO/IEC 27001, and
(iii) secure software engineering practices from NIST SP 800-218 (SSDF),
combined with application-layer standards such as OWASP ASVS and OWASP
API Security Top 10 (2023). OWASP Foundation+5NIST Computer Security
Resource Center+5NIST Computer Security Resource Center+5 Results include
a reference architecture for secure SaaS delivery (Figure 1) and a metrics-based
control matrix (Table 1) linking threat categories to measurable security outcomes,
aligned with SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria and cloud assurance mapping via
CSA CCM. AICPA & CIMA+2Cloud Security Alliance+2 The paper concludes
that resilient SaaS security requires unifying secure development, identity-centric
architecture, supply-chain integrity (SBOM/SLSA), and operational telemetry
into a continuous assurance loop.
How to Cite
References
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