How SaaS Security Inline Determines an Application's Risk Score
Table of Contents
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- Allowed List of IP Addresses
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- Begin Scanning a Bitbucket App
- Begin Scanning a Box App
- Begin Scanning ChatGPT Enterprise App
- Begin Scanning a Cisco Webex Teams App
- Begin Scanning a Confluence App
- Begin Scanning a Confluence Data Center App
- Begin Scanning a Dropbox App
- Begin Scanning a GitHub App
- Begin Scanning a Gmail App
- Begin Scanning a Google Drive App
- Begin Scanning a Jira App
- Begin Scanning a Jira Data Center App
- Begin Scanning a Microsoft Exchange App
- Begin Scanning Office 365 Apps
- Begin Scanning a Microsoft Teams App
- Begin Scanning a Salesforce App
- Begin Scanning a ServiceNow App
- Begin Scanning a ShareFile App
- Begin Scanning a Slack Enterprise App
- Begin Scanning a Slack for Pro and Business App
- Begin Scanning a Workday App (Beta)
- Begin Scanning a Zendesk App
- Begin Scanning a Zoom App
- Reauthenticate to a Cloud App
- Verify Permissions on Cloud Apps
- Start Scanning a Cloud App
- Rescan a Managed Cloud App
- Delete Cloud Apps Managed by Data Security
- API Throttling
- Configure Classification Labels
- Microsoft Labeling for Office 365
- Google Drive Labeling
- Configure Phishing Analysis
- Configure WildFire Analysis
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- What is an Incident?
- Assess New Incidents on Data Security
- Filter Incidents
- Configure Slack Notification Alerts on Data Security
- Security Controls Incident Details
- Track Down Threats with WildFire Report
- Customize the Incident Categories
- Close Incidents
- Download Assets for Incidents
- View Asset Snippets for Incidents
- Analyze Inherited Exposure
- Email Asset Owners
- Modify Incident Status
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- What’s SaaS Security Inline?
- Navigate To SaaS Security Inline
- SaaS Visibility for NGFW
- SaaS Visibility and Controls for NGFW
- SaaS Visibility for Prisma Access
- SaaS Visibility and Controls for Panorama Managed Prisma Access
- SaaS Visibility and Controls for Cloud Managed Prisma Access
- Activate SaaS Security Inline for NGFW
- Activate SaaS Security Inline for VM-Series Firewalls with Software NGFW Credits
- Activate SaaS Security Inline for Prisma Access
- Connect SaaS Security Inline and Strata Logging Service
- Integrate with Azure Active Directory
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- SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- App-ID Cloud Engine
- Guidelines for SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Predefined SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Apply Predefined SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Create SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Delete SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Enable SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Modify Active SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
- Monitor SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations
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- Enable Automatic Updates for SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations on Cloud Managed Prisma Access
- Import New SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations on Cloud Managed Prisma Access
- Update Imported SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations on Cloud Managed Prisma Access
- Remove Deleted SaaS Policy Rule Recommendations on Cloud Managed Prisma Access
- Manage Enforcement of Rule Recommendations on NGFW
- Manage Enforcement of Rule Recommendations on Panorama Managed Prisma Access
- Change Risk Score for Discovered SaaS Apps
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- Onboarding Overview for Supported SaaS Apps
- Onboard an Aha.io App to SSPM
- Onboard an Alteryx Designer Cloud App to SSPM
- Onboard an Aptible App to SSPM
- Onboard an ArcGIS App to SSPM
- Onboard an Articulate Global App to SSPM
- Onboard an Atlassian App to SSPM
- Onboard a BambooHR App to SSPM
- Onboard a Basecamp App to SSPM
- Onboard a Bitbucket App to SSPM
- Onboard a BlueJeans App to SSPM
- Onboard a Box App to SSPM
- Onboard a Bright Security App to SSPM
- Onboard a Celonis App to SSPM
- Onboard a Cisco Meraki App to SSPM
- Onboard a ClickUp App to SSPM
- Onboard a Confluence App to SSPM
- Onboard a Contentful App to SSPM
- Onboard a Convo App to SSPM
- Onboard a Couchbase App to SSPM
- Onboard a Coveo App to SSPM
- Onboard a Crowdin Enterprise App to SSPM
- Onboard a Customer.io App to SSPM
- Onboard a Databricks App to SSPM
- Onboard a Datadog App to SSPM
- Onboard a DocHub App to SSPM
- Onboard a DocuSign App to SSPM
- Onboard an Envoy App to SSPM
- Onboard an Expiration Reminder App to SSPM
- Onboard a Gainsight PX App to SSPM
- Onboard a GitLab App to SSPM
- Onboard a Google Analytics App to SSPM
- Onboard a Google Workspace App to SSPM
- Onboard a GoTo Meeting App to SSPM
- Onboard a Grammarly App to SSPM
- Onboard a Harness App to SSPM
- Onboard a Hellonext App to SSPM
- Onboard an IDrive App to SSPM
- Onboard an Intercom App to SSPM
- Onboard a Jira App to SSPM
- Onboard a Kanbanize App to SSPM
- Onboard a Kanban Tool App to SSPM
- Onboard a Kustomer App to SSPM
- Onboard a Lokalise App to SSPM
- Onboard a Microsoft Azure AD App to SSPM
- Onboard a Microsoft Outlook App to SSPM
- Onboard a Microsoft Power BI App to SSPM
- Onboard a Miro App to SSPM
- Onboard a monday.com App to SSPM
- Onboard a MongoDB Atlas App to SSPM
- Onboard a MuleSoft App to SSPM
- Onboard a Mural App to SSPM
- Onboard an Office 365 App to SSPM
- Onboard an Okta App to SSPM
- Onboard a PagerDuty App to SSPM
- Onboard a RingCentral App to SSPM
- Onboard a Salesforce App to SSPM
- Onboard an SAP Ariba App to SSPM
- Onboard a ServiceNow App to SSPM
- Onboard a Slack Enterprise App to SSPM
- Onboard a Snowflake App to SSPM
- Onboard a SparkPost App to SSPM
- Onboard a Tableau Cloud App to SSPM
- Onboard a Webex App to SSPM
- Onboard a Workday App to SSPM
- Onboard a Wrike App to SSPM
- Onboard a YouTrack App to SSPM
- Onboard a Zendesk App to SSPM
- Onboard a Zoom App to SSPM
- Onboarding an App Using Azure AD Credentials
- Onboarding an App Using Okta Credentials
- Register an Azure AD Client Application
- View the Health Status of Application Scans
- Delete SaaS Apps Managed by SSPM
How SaaS Security Inline Determines an Application's Risk Score
An application's risk score is determined by a calculation that is applied to the
application's attribute values.
We designed application risk scores to help you quickly assess the security posture of an
application. Because you might be using this information to determine whether to allow
or block access to an application, it's helpful to understand how SaaS Security Inline
determines the risk score. Ultimately, an application's risk score is determined by a
calculation that is based on the application's attribute values. But to understand the
significance and accuracy of the risk score, you should understand how we identify the
application attributes, how we determine the attribute values for each application, and
how the calculation considers some attributes to have a greater impact on risk scores
than others.
To determine an application's risk score, the following actions are taken by Palo Alto
Networks and by SaaS Security Inline.
- Attribute Identification: Palo Alto Networks analyzes the current SaaS security landscape to identify characteristics of SaaS applications that can impact an application's security posture. These characteristics are the attributes that we will identify for the SaaS applications that SaaS Security Inline can detect in your environment. These attributes are divided into the following categories based on how they can impact an application's security posture.
- Compliance attributes identify whether an application adheres to various regulatory requirements and standards.
- Identity Access Management attributes identify an application's authentication and access control capabilities.
- Security and Privacy attributes identify product features for protecting data.
Attribute Identification Updates: Palo Alto Network's analysis of the SaaS security landscape is ongoing. As new threats emerge, new application attributes are added to SaaS Security Inline. - Attribute Value Determination: For each SaaS application that can be detected by SaaS Security Inline, Palo Alto Networks determines the values to assign to the application attributes. Palo Alto Networks uses a variety of techniques to determine whether the SaaS application has the capabilities identified by the attributes. For many attributes, we rely on publicly available documentation to determine attribute values. This publicly available documentation includes a SaaS application's help documentation, privacy policy, and security documents. For other attributes, we examine the application domain or application traffic to determine attribute values.In most cases, the determination of attribute values is an automated process. For certain priority applications, we manually determine attribute values. We identify applications as priority applications based on application usage and user feedback.
- Compliance Attribute Determination: To determine these attribute values, we rely completely on the documentation and public links of the application.
- Identity Access Management Attribute Determination: To determine these attribute values, we rely mostly on the documentation and public links of the application. For a subset of applications that we have identified as priority applications, we access the application to determine attribute values.
- Security and Privacy Attribute Determination: We use several methods
to determine these attribute values. The method we use depends on the
particular attribute.
Attributes Attribute Determination Method - Data Ownership
- File/Content Sharing
- Audit Log
- Disaster Recovery
- Encryption at Rest
- Encryption Strength at Rest
- Native Data Classification
- Data Retention
- Privacy Policy
- Terms and Conditions
- Session Timeout
- Third Party Data Sharing
To determine values for these attributes, we rely completely on the documentation and public links of the application. Encryption in Transit We examine the SaaS application domain to identify the TLS versions that the application supports. HTTP Security Headers We analyze application traffic to identify whether the SaaS application is using security headers. Protected from Downgrade Attacks We examine the SaaS application domain to identify the TLS versions that the application supports. We also examine whether the SaaS application allows TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1 connections. Spoof Risk Level We analyze the DMARC and SPF records for the SaaS application domain to determine the value for this attribute.
Attribute Value Determination Updates:- On a monthly basis, we identify new SaaS applications and add the applications to the application library. We determine the attribute values for these new applications.
- On a monthly basis, we manually verify attribute data for priority applications. If necessary, we update attribute values based on this research.
- On a monthly basis, we measure the accuracy of the attribute data collected by our automated processes. On a quarterly basis, we update our automated processes based on this research.
- On a quarterly basis, we collect and update attribute values for applications by using our updated automated processes.
- Attribute Weight Assignment: We assign weights to application attributes, which will affect the risk score calculation. We assign each attribute a default weight from 0-100. As required by the risk score calculation, the combined weights for all of the attributes total 100.To assign default weights, we assess the security impact of the attribute categories and the individual attributes. Attributes that we consider to have a greater security impact are assigned greater weights, and will have a greater impact on an application's risk score. You can view the default weights from the SaaS Security Settings page (SettingsConfigureConfigure Global Risk Score). From this page, you can also adjust the weights assigned to attributes.Attribute Weight Assignment Updates: As we add attributes to SaaS Security Inline, we revise the attribute weight assignments, which in turn can affect the application risk scores. We might also update weight assignments if we determine that certain attributes should have a greater or lesser impact on an application's risk score.
- Risk Score Calculation: SaaS Security Inline assigns a risk score for each application by completing the following actions:
- SaaS Security Inline assigns a risk score to each attribute based on the attribute value. The attribute value identifies an application characteristic that strengthens or weakens the application's overall security posture. If the value weakens the security posture, the attribute is assigned a higher risk score. For example, the MFA attribute value indicates whether an application offers multi-factor authentication (MFA). If the application does support MFA, the attribute is assigned the lowest risk score. However, if the attribute value indicates that the application does not offer MFA (or that MFA support cannot be derived from the application documentation), the attribute is assigned a higher risk score.
- To determine the application's overall risk score, SaaS Security Inline calculates the weighted average of the individual attribute risk scores. The weighted average is based on the weights that were assigned to the attributes.
- SaaS Security Inline scales the risk score within a range of 1-5, with 1 representing the lowest risk and 5 representing the greatest risk, and assigns the risk score to the application.
If you think there are adjustments that we should make to an application's risk score, send us feedback. To send us feedback, click on the following icon, which appears on the Application Dictionary, Discovered Applications, and Application Detail views.In the Give App Feedback form, select Risk score adjustment as the Feedback Type.