SSPM vs. CASB: Understanding the Differences

Learn how you can take your cloud and network protection to the next level. The debate between SSPM vs. CASB is always ongoing and we’ll shed light on the critical differences between these two today

SSPM vs CASB are similar solutions but differ in some aspects. You can use CASB to control your identities, permissions, and data encryption. However, SSPM is meant for security and data protection for SaaS apps on the cloud. A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) sits on-premises between the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) and the consumer. It can enforce policies by identifying risks and compliance issues present within your organization.

It is expected that the CASB market will reach USD 37.1 billion by 2031 at its quickest growth in regions like North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. SSPMs have far less setup time, with easier management in comparison to CASBs. However, they protect only SaaS technology stacks. In a 2023 SaaS implementation planning survey, 80% of companies agreed to the fact that they were planning to increase their adoption of SaaS SPM solutions.

In SSPM vs CASB, SSPM outclasses CASB in securing niche cloud-based apps. They also offer advanced API discovery, inventory management, and a single pane of glass for visibility into the SaaS landscape. Of course, these tools are capable of providing security coverage for apps that could not be covered with CASB solutions.

However, CASB’s market continues to surge as businesses are making investments in these tools. CASBs can be adopted into pipelines to solve various productivity challenges. They are used for collaboration, data storage, and fulfill other unique security requirements.

So how do you decide between CASB vs SSPM? We’ll answer that today.

What is SSPM?

SaaS apps streamline business processes and make it affordable to run daily operations.

It lets them not worry about constant upgrades, patches, and take care of maintenance.

But the downside is security. There are potential data privacy concerns, limited customization options, and a lack of specific features. SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solutions can keep a constant eye on these apps and fix potential vulnerabilities.

SSPM tools can identify any misconfigurations with SaaS apps and provide a single-pane-of-glass visibility for all SaaS-related security risks. On a high level, it can also perform deep analysis and perform thorough validation of existing security benchmarks and checks.

What are the key features of SSPM?

SSPM solutions provide many key features that are as follows:

• SSPM solutions can continuously monitor and enforce security policies for SaaS cloud apps.
• SSPM tools can easily be integrated with customer support tools, workspace, dashboard, video conferencing platform, messaging apps, and any other set of integrated software solutions.
• You can execute built-in security checks and configure your SSPM for compliance with industry-specific standards such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and others.
• SSPM solutions help IT teams to better understand security risks and derive actionable insights. This single pane of glass view in a unified dashboard will give them all relevant information regarding security matters.
• Of the two, SSPM and CASB, SSPM appears to be more apt for businesses that want deeper visibility of user behaviors and probable vulnerabilities that are associated with SaaS applications.
• SSPM will encrypt both data in transit and at rest. Most SaaS providers offer built-in encryption services but many third-party tools offer proper encryption and support.

What is CASB?

CASB is only concerned with point-of-access monitoring and does not cover SaaS environments.CASB is all about control and acts as the gatekeeper of cloud services. It is a tool that enforces custom security policies and provides robust access controls.

What are the key features of CASB?

Here are the key features of CASB that can help boost cloud security posture:

• CASBs can combine multiple different security policies, including ones related to credentials mapping, malware detection, encryption, and more.
• CASB can ensure robust cloud app security for both authorized and unauthorized apps, also for managed and unmanaged devices.
• Organizations can detect unusual behaviors or anomalies in networks by using CASB tools. CASB tools specialize in thwarting ransomware attacks, rogue apps, and can safeguard compromised users from further escalations.
• Among SSPM vs CASB, CASB can identify threats found with increasing application usage and analyze them for automated remediation.
• Enterprises can enjoy strong data analytics when employing CASB tools. They can obtain a holistic security picture of their cloud activities and incorporate the necessary measures.
• CASBs can control access to users, cloud apps, services, and various other online activities. They can provide detailed insights regarding environmental usage and can, therefore, allow granular visibility.

CASB tools will help protect sensitive data like credit card numbers, personal information, health records, and social security numbers. These solutions will provide DLP technologies that can prevent the accidental sharing of unauthorized data.

3 Critical Differences between SSPM vs CASB

Here are some major differences between SSPM vs CASB:

#1 SSPM vs CASB: Security Policy Enforcement and Encryption

CASB can incorporate multiple types of security policy enforcement. For example, there are different types of security policies related to: single sign-on, authentication, device profiling, encryption, credential mapping, logging, alerting, tokenization, and malware detection/prevention. CASB can consolidate these security policies and implement them.

Enterprises can control access to corporate data at rest or in transit by using CASB tools. Nearly 50% of cloud data breaches happen due to failed audits. The increase in remote work practices organizations have to deal with growing sensitive data volumes. Cloud security is turned off by default for modern cloud services. CASB tools can encrypt such information and turn on security by default to keep them protected.

#2 SSPM vs CASB: Wide Range of Integrations

Each SaaS app is different and SSPM can integrate with a wide range of SaaS products. Some SaaS apps may act as an entry point to attackers which may pose certain risks. This can be prevented by taking advantage of other application integrations. SSPM can perform safety checks and guard against misconfigurations, unlike CASB. CASBs cannot cover all possible configurations and SaaS app settings. CASBs also suffer from a lack of adaptability to keeping SaaS apps secure, especially when features and functionalities evolve with their new releases.

Also, for custom integrations, CASBs require a proxy which will incur additional costs to organizations.

#3 SSPM vs CASB: Cost and Setup

In SSPM vs CASB, SSPM tools are far more affordable and easier to set up than CASBs. CASBs can only protect critical cloud apps and not the organization’s full SaaS tech stack. SSPMs also have the added benefit of being able to identify non-IdP users that sit outside the organization. They can identify user devices with poor security hygiene issues too.

SSPM vs CASB: Key Differences

Areas of Differentiation	SSPM	CASB
Objective	Manages security services for cloud-based applications.	Monitors and controls cloud-based applications.
Focus	SSPM focuses on the security services themselves, such as DLP, antivirus, and firewalls.	CASB focuses on cloud-based applications and data.
Scope	Typically covers a specific set of security services, such as cloud-based email or cloud-based storage.	Typically covers a broader range of cloud-based applications, such as SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS.
Key Features	Service discovery, service monitoring, and service orchestration.	Cloud-based application discovery, cloud-based application monitoring, and cloud-based application control.
Benefits	Provides a centralized view of security services, enables better security service management, and improves incident response.	Provides visibility and control over cloud-based applications, enables data loss prevention, and improves compliance.
Challenges	Can be complex to implement and manage, and requires significant resources.	Can be challenging to implement and manage, and requires significant resources.
Use Cases	Ideal for organizations with complex security service landscapes, such as those with multiple cloud-based applications.	Ideal for organizations with a large number of cloud-based applications, such as those with a cloud-first strategy.

What are the Key Advantages of SSPM & CASB?

Here are the key advantages of CASB:

1. CASBs can protect cloud app data and secure access to various cloud services. It doesn’t matter how complex cloud environments become, these solutions are suitable for single, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
2. CASB’s access controls can safeguard sensitive information and protect it from unauthorized access. CASBs can enforce encryption and DLP policies for effective data protection.
3. In terms of visibility for SSPM vs CASB, CASB outperforms SSPM by providing better visibility into cloud data usage. SSPM is specific to SaaS apps and this is a key distinction.  CASBs can generate compliance reports and maintain regulatory requirements by monitoring cloud activities.
4. CASBs can consolidate cloud security functions into a single platform. They can reduce the need for using multiple cloud security tools. CASBs can optimize cloud spending by detecting underutilized resources and providing better visibility into cloud usage patterns.

SSPM can offer distinct advantages over CASB too, in the context of CASB vs SSPM:

1. SSPM can connect to other SaaS apps, plugins, APIs, and shadow SaaS. It can protect sensitive data from being exfiltrated to unknown locations.
2. SSPM tools are great at maintaining compliance with HIPAA and GDPR policies. They can reduce the risk of expanding attack surfaces and eliminate insider threats.
3. Organizations can customize their incident response to fulfill unique SSPM vs CASB use cases. Most SSPM tools can control risk exposure by providing visibility across data in transit and at rest.
4. SSPM can combine threat intelligence from multiple sources with the analysis of the nature of cloud security attacks. These tools can help companies maintain a better awareness of emerging threats and improve upon existing risk mitigation strategies.
5. One of the biggest benefits of SSPM is that it can settle inactive accounts. You can predict the probability of future cyber attacks and identify which accounts have excessive or unwanted access privileges. Hackers cannot use these malicious accounts to escalate attacks if you find and fix them. More importantly, SSPM can send automated alerts and notifications to your security team.

What are the Limitations of CASB vs SSPM?

Here is a list of limitations of SSPM in the context of SSPM vs CASB:

1. Shadow IT attacks are a possible security concern when using SSPM solutions. These tools are not configured to handle them and organizations need to identify and catalog all their IT assets. SSPM cannot detect security risks that bypass the organization’s security policies and controls.
2. In SSPM vs CASB, Identity Access and Management (IAM) is not taken care of in SSPM. The right individuals may not have the right access to the right information at all times. SaaS SPM tools cannot manage user identities and their access to apps on their own. To enhance overall security posture, organizations will need to invest in dedicated IAM solutions with SSPM.
3. SSPM cannot identify stored data on the cloud nor ensure its protection. You will need to pair SSPM with DLP (Data Loss Prevention) technology to prevent data breaches. Organizations need to learn how to set up appropriate security policies, define sensitive data access, and monitor data transactions.

In SSPM vs CASB, CASBs have their limits, and here are the ones you need to be aware of:

1. CASBs cannot distinguish between app and user behaviors for cloud services. This is a big red flag in organizations and they only collect security data for analysis.
2. Setting up CASBs for large enterprises is not easy; these solutions take considerable setup time and can be complex to configure and manage. Sometimes, organizations may need to use endpoint agents to redirect complex cloud traffic.
3. Most CASBs focus on perimeter security and encrypt data at rest and in transit. But they can’t provide client-side encryption, code-level security, or take care of application vulnerabilities.

When to choose between SSPM vs CASB?

SSPM will help you build trust with your customers and maintain a stronger commitment to SaaS app security. It can help security teams detect SaaS application security events as they occur. It’s better than ad-hoc monitoring, manual testing, and most SSPM tools adopt an offensive security mindset.

Whenever an SSPM tool detects a misconfiguration or security risk, it will instantly remediate it and send an alert to your security team. You can also address the problem of cloud configuration drifts when you choose to use SSPM tools, for SSPM vs CASB solutions. If your goal is to improve operational efficiency and reduce the downtimes of SaaS apps in cloud environments, then SSPM is a better choice.

SSPM and CASB Use Cases

Here are the most popular CASB use cases, in SSPM and CASB:

1. Discover Cloud Apps and Services – CASBs can help you perform regular audits on your existing cloud infrastructure. CASBs give a comprehensive view of all cloud-based apps within the organization. However,  CASBs cannot monitor user interactions with SaaS apps and that is something to consider.
2. Perform Compliance and Risk Assessments – Organizations can avoid many legal troubles by using a CASB tool. With ongoing monitoring, CASBs can ensure that the right compliance standards are adhered to. Every state has different rules and regulations about data management, storage, and transmission. CASBs can evaluate legal considerations and regulatory compliance statuses to prevent potential policy violations.

For SSPM vs CASB, here is a list of the most popular SSPM use cases:

1. Cloud Identities Redefined – SSPM can integrate aspects of cloud identities and configurations. They can create risk profiles for user interactions with SaaS apps. You can use the best-in-class Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) tools to integrate with SSPM and get complete SaaS protection.
2. Analyze and Research Security Problems – You can use SSPM to monitor the availability of various SaaS services in SSPM vs CASB. SSPM is ideal for SaaS performance monitoring as it can track key metrics like throughputs, and response times. Restore SaaS services quickly, prevent downtimes, and ensure service continuity. You can also use SaaS tools to improve user experiences by tracking and analyzing UX metrics like login times, page loads, and error rates.
3. Ensure that SLA Requirements Are Met – Many SaaS apps have their SLAs. You can use SSPM to find improvement zones and trace the performance of SaaS applications. You can also apply SSPM to do root cause analysis and resolve critical vulnerabilities. For cloud migrations, SSPM ensures consistency and optimizes SaaS application performance so that you can smoothly pass through the migration process without any friction.

Consolidating SSPM vs CASB for Robust Security

SentinelOne can be your best bet when it comes to consolidating SSPM and CASB security. You can achieve a holistic cloud security posture by pairing the best of both worlds. Before implementing SentinelOne, get a clear understanding of your cloud access and business security requirements.

You can scale up or down our services as you like. There is no fixed pricing model and SentinelOne offers businesses customizable pricing plans. SentinelOne Data Lake will allow you to ingest data from multiple sources and keep it stored for however long you want. Security teams can centralize and transform this ingested data for actionable insights.

With SentinelOne’s unified, AI-driven data lake, organizations can perform near real-time lightning fast queries. There is no expensive data retention management or the need to reallocate resources. SentinelOne can accelerate your security investigations with AI-assisted analytics.

It can augment your cloud security posture by automating response with built-in alert correlation and custom STAR Rules. What you really need is comprehensive cloud security with an AI-powered CNAPP. Here’s what makes  Singularity™ Cloud Security so awesome:

AI-Powered Threat Detection and Response

SentinelOne’s AI-powered CNAPP gives you Deep Visibility® of your environment. It provides active defense against AI-powered attacks, capabilities to shift security further left, and next-gen investigation and response.

Context-aware Purple AI™ provides contextual summaries of alerts, suggested next steps and the option to seamlessly start an in-depth investigation aided by the power of generative and agentic AI – all documented in one investigation notebook. SentinelOne can fight against malware, zero-days, ransomware, phishing, and all other kinds of cyber security threats. You get 24/7 threat monitoring, threat hunting, and additional capabilities.

Enhance SaaS Security Posture Management

Singularity™ Cloud Security from SentinelOne is the most comprehensive and integrated CNAPP solution available in the market. It delivers SaaS security posture management and includes features like a graph-based asset inventory, shift-left security testing, CI/CD pipeline integration, container and Kubernetes security posture management, and more. SentinelOne can tighten permissions for SaaS apps and prevent secrets leakage. It can configure checks on AI services, discover AI pipelines and models, and provides protection that goes beyond CSPM. You can do SaaS app pen-testing automatically, identify exploit paths, and get real-time AI-powered protection. SentinelOne protects SaaS apps across public, private, on-prem, and hybrid cloud and IT environments.

Complete Cloud Workload Protection

Singularity™ Cloud Workload Security offers real-time protection for cloud workloads, servers, and containers in hybrid clouds. Multiple AI-powered detection engines work together to provide machine-speed protection against runtime attacks. SentinelOne provides autonomous threat protection at scale and does holistic root cause and blast radius analysis of affected cloud workloads, infrastructure, and data stores.

Singularity™ Cloud Security can enforce shift-left security and enable developers to identify vulnerabilities before they reach production with agentless scanning of infrastructure-as-code templates, code repositories, and container registries. It significantly reduces your overall attack surface.

Manages Cloud Identities

SentinelOne’s CNAPP can manage cloud entitlements. It can tighten permissions and prevent secrets leakage. You can detect up to 750+ different types of secrets.  Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) provides full forensic telemetry. You also get incident response services from experts and it comes with a pre-built and customizable detection library. SentinelOne’s Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) supports agentless deployment in minutes. You can easily assess compliance and eliminate misconfigurations. If your goal is to build a zero trust security architecture and enforce the principle of least privilege access across all cloud accounts, then SentinelOne can help you do that.

Conclusion

This finally ends the long-standing debate between SSPM vs CASB.

SSPM gives the advantage of granular visibility and control into your cloud-based infrastructure with real-time SaaS-based monitoring and threat detection capabilities. CASB concentrates on policy enforcement, security access management, and cloud-based compliance.

Ultimately, the choice between SSPM vs CASB really depends on the different needs and priorities of your organization. Understanding the differences between these two technology solutions will help you make a well-informed decision on how to protect the security and integrity of your cloud and SaaS estates.

FAQs

Can SSPM replace CASB or vice versa?

SSPM vs CASB are both solutions for cloud security, but they each serve different purposes. While CASB is designed to secure cloud applications and data, SSPM does so for SaaS services and APIs. In other words, SSPM cannot replace CASB since they deal with completely different sets of security issues but can definitely supplement each other for holistic cloud security.

What is the difference between CASB and CSPM?

While both CASB and CSPM are solutions for securing clouds, they each have different objectives. CASB is focused on monitoring and controlling user access to cloud applications. In contrast, CSPM deals with monitoring and enforcement of security configurations and compliance within cloud infrastructures. In other words, CASB ensures secure access to cloud resources, while CSPM does the same in ensuring safe configurations and postures of those cloud resources.

What is the difference between CASB and SSE?

While CASB and SSE are solutions for cloud security, the former is designed to secure cloud applications and their data, while the latter deals with security matters related to all kinds of cloud-based services. By definition, SSE provides a unified security platform for cloud services that goes beyond the conventional scope of CASB in cloud application security.