2023 is the Year of the Enterprise Browser

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution has transformed the way we think about and use software, but some big challenges remain if organizations are going to realize the full benefits of digital transformation. Enterprises adopting SaaS must answer thorny questions around compliance, transparency and cybersecurity in order to fully realize the potential benefits.

The seeds of the SaaS revolution were planted decades ago with the emergence of the web and the web browser. Since then, the browser has continued to evolve to meet the needs of users and the demand for new applications but has been taken for granted and largely ignored by IT and security teams.

We’ve reached a tipping point where that’s no longer feasible, assuming organizations strive to continue their SaaS transformations. With the proper cybersecurity refinements and instrumentation, the browser represents the perfect tool to unlock the full potential of the SaaS revolution for the enterprise.

Organizations are Betting Bigger on SaaS

Organizations are shifting bigger and bigger chunks of their annual spend to SaaS applications. Gartner predicts that SaaS spending in 2023 will grow 18% over 2022, on top of 16% growth the previous year, reaching more than $200 billion. According to Bettercloud, the average org used 130 different SaaS applications in 2022, up 18% from 2021. As organizational appetite for SaaS has increased, so have the number of applications available. SaaS apps continue to explode in number and sophistication, with around 30,000 SaaS companies worldwide today.

Organizations Reap Enormous Benefits From SaaS

The potential payoff for organizations who successfully transform is enormous. Benefits that organizations who shift to SaaS are enjoying include:

• Scalability: SaaS provides built-in scalability, allowing organizations to scale up or scale down their usage rapidly, and with a predictable cost model.

• Agility: New SaaS applications can be implemented very quickly, allowing IT teams to be more responsive to rapidly changing business needs.

• Accessibility: SaaS apps can be accessed by users from anywhere, and through most any device, from desktops to tablets to mobile phones. This creates better experiences for end users, and unlocks additional benefits such as Bring Your Own Device and streamlined onboarding for new employees and contractors.

But Roadblocks Remain

So what’s standing in the way of complete and total migration to the SaaS future? Plenty, it turns out. And the browser has a pivotal role to play in clearing the path forward.

• Privacy and control: 42% of companies report difficulties enforcing proper security and privacy controls over SaaS apps. SaaS apps contain a great deal of sensitive information, and unauthorized disclosure of information can bring enormous costs and regulatory disclosures. Unfortunately, many SaaS apps provide weak control over the user’s access to data, making it difficult to enforce proper access controls for different groups of users.It’s difficult to imagine a world where each one of the 30,000+ SaaS solution providers come together and implement a powerful, universal set of access controls. The browser, however, gives us a workable answer. Properly instrumented, the browser can serve as a clean central control point, dramatically reducing the complexity of implementing proper access controls.

• Transparency: SaaS apps often don’t provide deep information on user activity within the application. This lack of transparency can make it difficult or impossible to achieve regulatory compliance, which often requires detailed audit logging for critical business processes. It can also interfere with investigations of security incidents, obscuring the activities of malicious users.However, even assuming that SaaS apps implement the necessary audit logging that organizations require (a big assumption indeed), organizations are still faced with the daunting task of configuring, ingesting, indexing and storing records from more than 130 different applications. The browser provides a clean point of consolidation with the potential to provide the necessary visibility into user activity in a much more scalable way.

• Security: Cyberattackers understand the power of the web browser and have evolved their tactics accordingly. Threats that leverage inherent weaknesses in the browser continue to proliferate with the ongoing rise of phishing and malicious web sites. In addition, security researchers continue to uncover countless new and innovative browser threats. 2022 brought an explosion of malicious browser extensions, new techniques for browser credential theft and a resurgence of hacker tools such as Redline Stealer available on the dark web, making it simple for attackers to extract sensitive data stored within the browser’s local resources. If organizations are going to realize the full potential of the SaaS revolution, the browser itself must become more resilient against all forms of attack, ensuring users and data remain safe from cybersecurity threats.

The Enterprise Browser Unlocks the SaaS Future

The rise of SaaS creates enormous opportunities for organizations, but significant challenges remain to full adoption. The browser represents a potentially powerful central point of visibility, control and security for IT teams and defenders, but it requires new and expanded capabilities to deliver the visibility and control that the SaaS enterprise requires.