: Determine the Risks Posed by a Third-Party Plugin
Focus
Focus

Determine the Risks Posed by a Third-Party Plugin

Table of Contents

Determine the Risks Posed by a Third-Party Plugin

Examine the access scopes that users granted to a third-party plugin to assess the risks to your environment.
Examine each unreviewed third-party plugin to determine if you want to allow it in your environment.
You can examine unreviewed plugins in the following two ways:
  • Across all marketplace apps from the 3rd Party Plugins page (Posture Security 3rd Party Plugins). The 3rd Party Plugins page displays a table of all the third-party plugins that were installed across all the marketplace app instances that you have onboarded to SSPM. The Status column of this table shows whether the plugin was Reviewed or Not Reviewed. Other columns of the table, such as the Severity and Risk columns, help you identify high-risk plugins.
  • For one marketplace app instance, from the Connected Applications tab of the app's details page. The Status column of the Connected Applications table shows whether the plugin was Reviewed or Not Reviewed. The Severity column of the table helps you identify high-risk plugins.
For more information about any of the marketplace apps, you can review the information shown in the catalog of third-party plugins.

Determine the Risks Posed by a Third-Party Plugin Across All Marketplace Apps

Review the information on the 3rd Party Plugins page to identify the riskiest plugins.
The 3rd Party Plugins page provides an overview of the third-party plugins that have been installed across all the marketplace app instances that you have onboarded to SSPM. Review the plugins to determine if you want to allow them in your environment. The 3rd Party Plugins page helps you easily identify the riskiest plugins, so you can revoke user access to the plugins. You can also mark plugins as Reviewed if you decide to allow them in your environment. By marking a plugin as Reviewed, administrators who view this page later do not have to reassess whether the plugin is a threat.
SSPM gathers the information for the 3rd Party Plugins page from the third-party plugin scans that SSPM runs for marketplace apps. If SSPM is not running third-party plugin scans for a particular marketplace app instance, the 3rd Party Plugins page will not show information for that marketplace app instance. For example, you can onboard Google Workspace with reduced permissions, in which case SSPM will not perform third-party plugin scans for that Google Workspace instance. The 3rd Party Plugins page will not display information for that Google Workspace instance.
  1. Navigate to Posture Security3rd Party Plugins.
  2. Navigate to the Plugins tab to review the third-party plugins.
    The Status column of the table identifies which plugins were Not Reviewed yet.
  3. Apply one or more filters to the Plugins table to view only the plugins of interest.
    • From the summary information at the top of the page, you can filter the table to show only the High Severity Plugins the were Not Reviewed.
    • Because the recent and rapid proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) apps has introduced new vulnerabilities for data leakage or deliberate attacks, the 3rd Party Plugins page highlights GenAI apps. From the summary information at the top of the page, you can filter the table to show only the GenAI Plugins that were Not Reviewed.
    • You can Add Filter to the Plugins table to filter the table by various plugin attributes, such as the type of marketplace app, the risk severity of the plugin, and the plugin's review status.
  4. Review each third-party plugin whose Status is Not Reviewed to decide whether you want to allow the plugin in your environment.
    To identify high-risk plugins, examine the information in the Severity and Risk columns of the table.
    The Severity is based on the marketplace application scopes that were granted to the third-party plugin. The greater the access to the marketplace application's data and actions, the higher the Severity. To view the scopes that the third-party plugin can access, click on Plugin Name in the table and, in the Plugin Details panel, navigate to view the plugin's Permissions.
    This Risk column shows the application's risk score. The risk score is between 1 (low risk) and 5 (high risk) and is calculated from over 55 application attributes including compliance attributes, security and privacy attributes, identity access management attributes, and, if applicable, generative AI attributes.
  5. To determine the popularity of the plugin in your organization, and the number of users who will be affected if you revoke access to the plugin, examine the information in the Active Users column. For more details about the users, click on Plugin Name in the table and, in the Plugin Details panel, navigate to view the plugin's Users.
  6. Take action on the third-party plugin.
    From the Actions column, you can specify that you Reviewed the plugin and will allow its continued use. From the Actions column you can also, in some cases, Revoke Access to the plugin for all active users of the plugin. To revoke access for individual users, click on Plugin Name in the table and, in the Plugin Details panel, navigate to view the plugin's Users. Whether the Revoke Access action is available depends on the level of permission that SSPM has to the marketplace app, and on the capabilities that the marketplace app's API provides. If the Revoke Access action is not available, you can instead log in to the SaaS app's administration console, and follow its documentation to remove the plugin.

Determine the Risks Posed by Third-Party Plugins for One Marketplace App

The Connected Applications tab shows the third-party plugins that are hosted in a marketplace app. Review the plugins to determine if you want to allow them in your environment.
For an individual marketplace app instance, you can review its third-party plugins from the Connected Applications tab of the app's details page. Examine each unreviewed third-party plugin to determine if you want to allow it in your environment.
  1. Navigate to the third-party plugins for a marketplace app. Do one of the following:
    • Navigate to the third-party plugins from the dashboard:
      1. Select Posture SecurityDashboard, and locate the Applications by 3rd Party Plugins area. This area shows the marketplace apps that have the most unreviewed plugins. The area shows the number of unreviewed plugins for each app.
        Investigate each unreviewed plugin to judge whether it threatens your organization's security.
      2. For the marketplace app whose third-party plugins you want to review, click the Unreviewed Plugins link.
    • Navigate to the third-party plugins for a marketplace app from the Applications page.
      1. Select Posture SecurityApplications.
      2. Locate the SaaS app, then View Details.
      3. Select the Connected Applications tab.
  2. On the Connected ApplicationsConnected Applications tab, view the list of third-party plugins that one or more users added to the marketplace app.
    The table on this page lists the plugin applications that were connected to the marketplace app. The table displays information for each plugin, such as its severity (based on the scopes that were granted to the plugin), whether the plugin was installed for the organization or for individual users, and whether the plugin is a public or private application. The information that SSPM can display in the table depends on the type of marketplace app that is hosting the third-party plugin.
    The Status column of the table identifies which plugins were Not Reviewed. Assess these plugins to determine if they are a risk to your environment.
    To filter the table to show only certain applications, click any of the application counts displayed in the upper section of the page, such as the application severity or review status counts. In the table, you can also Add Filter to filter the table by attributes such as the application severity, review status, or accessed scopes.
    Click the table's download icon to export the table information to a CSV file. The file will contain all the applications unless you applied a filter to the table.
  3. In the Applications column, click the name of the third-party plugin that you want to review.
  4. Examine the details of the third-party plugin.
  5. Take action on the third-party plugin.
    From the Actions column, you can specify that the plugin was Reviewed, or you can Revoke Access to the plugin. From the Users tab, you can also Revoke Access for individual users (if SSPM supports the Revoke Access action for the marketplace app).