SaaS applications have almost become indispensable in any business given how much the employees or the business process itself depend on the cloud applications every day. The more the organization becomes dependent on their Saas apps the more it is susceptible to its liabilities. Compliance, Security and Governance are the important factors that needs to be in constant scrutiny and hence special efforts needs to be taken to keep them intact while maintaining Cloud applications. In this blog we are going to explain how 8KMiles helped one of its Fortune 100 clients to achieve security and governance for their SaaS apps.

Our client is one of the world’s multinational computer technology corporation, serving the requirement of customers in over 150 countries, with an enterprise customer list which includes more than 120 Fortune 500 companies across Asia Pacific, Middle-East, Europe, Americas and Africa, and gross revenues to the tune of US$12.60 billion and growing. Their main business involved providing and managing Enterprise software and Cloud computing.

This client approached 8KMiles with a specific set of requirements to work on secured payload automation technologies and 8KMiles was expected to integrate its customer’s secured payload automation with hundreds of SaaS Applications.

8KMiles worked extensively to collaborate with its customer to understand the customer’s business needs and requirements:

• Configure SaaS Application for customer’s Identity Service SSO integration, Test and Certify.
• Complete Testing of the SaaS App integration.
• Review and Acceptance by the customer.
• Setup and configure Identity Service conversion tools and Identity Service environment for SSO integration with SaaS Apps
• Pre-validate and test SaaS Applications
• SaaS Application Monitoring & Maintenance Support

8KMiles studied the requirement systematically and came up with solutions based on Agile methodology for the above pain-points.

1. 8KMiles developed template for each SaaS App by using the encryption technology given by customer.
2. 8KMiles Setup the encryption tools in 8KMiles environment
3. Used the identity service tool to work on SSO configuration.
4. After completing the configuration, 8KMiles tested the SSO integration using the appropriate test cases for each SaaS App
5. Provided test results of the SSO integration between identity service and the SaaS App to customer.
6. Run the SSO integration scheduler at the 8K Miles MISP Portal, that schedules automatic SSO integration (simulation) testing of all SaaS Apps.
7. Run Health Check Processes to Troubleshoot the SaaS Apps that failed in the automatic SSO integration testing.
8. Troubleshooting includes:
   1. SaaS App version changes and/or URL Changes
   2. SaaS App SSO integration errors

The key challenges faced by 8KMiles was

• To integrate high volume of SaaS Apps per week
• To acquire an account with SSO enabled feature from the SaaS vendors within a short period of time
• To work on applications that have multi-page form which requires complex payload automation

And 8KMiles was successful in establishing its relationship with SaaS Vendors.
Thus, 8KMiles enabled its customer to attain the following business benefits:

• 8KMiles worked in Agile mode and resolved technical and functional issues by following strict SLA thus saving customer’s time
• 8KMiles also raised its bar in terms of throughput without compromising on security and compliance factor.
• Rate at which 8KMiles started delivering the SaaS App to the customer with shorter iterative cycles due to sustained automation there by influencing the customer’s ability to market the apps to their prospects faster.
• Established good relationship with SaaS vendors thus achieving customer’s expectations and helping to promote secured payload automation with SaaS vendors
• Accurate Report generation
• Ability to monitor the status of SaaS Apps and to inform customer on timely basis.

For more details or enquiries on Identity Access Management services, reach [email protected].
Author Credit:   Ramprasshanth Vishwanathan, Senior Business Analyst- IAM SBU

The post

Achieving sustained automation without compromising on Compliance, Security and Governance