Modern businesses now operate almost entirely in the cloud. From productivity suites like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to CRMs and accounting platforms, organizations rely heavily on SaaS applications to power their most critical business operations.
For MSPs, this means your clients’ data no longer lives behind a secure firewall. It’s scattered across dozens of SaaS apps and potentially exposed to dozens of risks. As more organizations move toward a cloud-first IT strategy, SaaS applications have become prime targets for cybercriminals.
As SaaS threats evolve, MSPs must continuously refine their security strategies and align their services to better protect clients. Staying ahead of today’s risks requires layered, automated and proactive defense.
Read on to learn how to build a robust SaaS security stack to protect your clients’ SaaS applications, end users and the data stored within them.
Understanding the SaaS threat landscape
With SaaS adoption continuing to grow, the attack surface is expanding rapidly. Cyberattacks aren’t slowing down — in fact, cybercriminals are constantly developing new techniques to exploit misconfigurations, risky user behaviors and vulnerabilities across interconnected SaaS apps.
SaaS security can be complex for MSPs and their clients because data, credentials and configurations now reside in vendor-controlled environments. While SaaS vendors implement strong security measures to protect their platforms and underlying infrastructure, end users remain the weakest link.
Here are some common vulnerabilities MSPs must watch out for:
Unauthorized access and credential theft: Attackers use phishing, social engineering, credential stuffing and token theft to steal credentials and gain access to sensitive information. Using a weak password or reusing an old one can easily lead to account takeovers.
Misconfigured permissions: IT teams often leave default settings unchanged, grant excessive privileges, or lack visibility and oversight into SaaS apps, allowing threat actors to gain unauthorized access and expose sensitive data.
Shadow IT: Employees frequently use SaaS tools that are not approved by IT, making them invisible to the MSP. While these tools might help enhance productivity, they create significant security and compliance risks.
Data leakage: SaaS apps make file sharing effortless but also increase the risk of data exposure due to misconfigurations, weak access controls, compromised third-party integrations or user error.
Integration risks: Connected SaaS-to-SaaS integrations introduce new attack vectors that attackers can exploit to gain access to sensitive data across multiple connected applications.
The result is a fragmented risk surface that’s hard to monitor and even harder to control without the right SaaS security stack. Attackers know this too well and increasingly target users, APIs and misconfigurations rather than the infrastructure itself. That’s why MSPs need a layered, proactive strategy to tackle emerging SaaS threats and protect clients effectively.
Building a layered SaaS defense
As SaaS threats evolve, MSPs must go beyond reactive measures and adopt a layered, proactive approach to security. A single tool or policy is no longer enough — modern protection requires multiple layers working together to secure every aspect of a client’s SaaS environment.
A comprehensive SaaS security stack should include capabilities across prevention, detection, response and recovery. This layered approach enables MSPs to prevent breaches, detect anomalies, respond to threats quickly and confidently recover from disruptive incidents.
The core components of a strong SaaS defense include:
Email security: Over 30% of all data breaches start with a phishing email. Since email remains the primary entry point for attacks, cutting-edge email security is essential to block phishing, malware and other socially engineered threats before they reach your clients’ end users.
Security awareness training and testing: According to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, human error contributed to about 60% of data breaches. Educating users through regular training and simulated phishing tests helps reduce the risk of human error.
Dark web monitoring: Proactively monitoring clients’ compromised credentials and exposed data on the dark web allows MSPs to identify risks before attackers can exploit them.
Threat detection and response: Machine-learning pattern detection, continuous monitoring and automated response workflows help MSPs identify and contain threats across SaaS environments in real time.
SaaS backup and recovery: Automated, continuous SaaS backups, coupled with point-in-time, non-destructive restore, ensure business continuity by protecting critical data against accidental deletion, insider threats and ransomware.
By combining these layers, your MSP can build a resilient SaaS security framework that not only mitigates risk but also enhances client confidence in your managed services.
Creating and managing a SaaS security stack as an MSP
To create an effective SaaS security offering, MSPs need to balance protection, automation and scalability.
Here’s how you can get started:
Vendor selection: Choosing the right SaaS security vendors is one of the most critical decisions when building a robust security stack. Look for security vendors that integrate seamlessly with your existing tools, such as RMM, PSA or ticketing systems. Prioritize open APIs and multitenant management.
Tiered service packages: Offer multiple protection tiers, such as essential and premium packages, to cater to different client needs and budgets. The “essential” package can include services like email security, security awareness training, dark web monitoring and threat detection and response. The “premium” package can include additional services like endpoint security, penetration testing and so on.
Staff enablement: Equip your technicians with the right knowledge and tools to respond to threats efficiently. Emphasize on cloud security best practices and incident response protocols. Encourage them to stay current with emerging threat trends, regulatory updates and vendor-specific security advisories.
Client communication: When it comes to SaaS security, client education is just as critical as technical defenses. You should communicate clearly about the shared responsibility model. Explain to them that while you manage the tools, policies and monitoring of the environment, clients and end users play a critical role by practicing secure behaviors. This includes enabling MFA, avoiding password reuse, reporting suspicious emails and following approved SaaS usage guidelines.
Kaseya 365 User: Everything you need to build a SaaS security stack
With SaaS threats becoming more complex and dangerous than ever, MSPs need a unified solution that brings every layer of protection together. Kaseya 365 User delivers exactly that.
A Kaseya 365 User subscription provides all the essential tools to protect and preserve the critical data and identities of SaaS users in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace environments. By combining threat prevention, detection and response, and backup and recovery, Kaseya 365 User provides a multilayered defense against today’s most advanced cyberthreats.
From our enterprise-grade email security to user awareness training, cloud detection and response, dark web monitoring and SaaS backup and recovery, Kaseya 365 User covers every aspect of cloud usage. With Kaseya 365 User, MSPs can build, manage and scale a complete SaaS security stack without juggling multiple standalone products, improving both client protection and profit margins.
Explore Kaseya 365 User to see how it can help your MSP strengthen client security and stay ahead of evolving threats.
