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Nudge Security vs. SMP

Wondering how a SaaS management platform (SMP) compares to Nudge Security? Learn why modern IT & security teams are turning to Nudge Security for a complete SaaS security and governance solution.

What is Nudge Security?

Nudge Security is a holistic SaaS security and governance platform for today’s highly distributed, cloud-first organizations.

Our patented approach to shadow SaaS discovery provides Day One visibility of all cloud and SaaS assets without relying on data from other software asset inventories, expense management systems, or network security tools.

Nudge Security provides a single source of SaaS truth that enables collaboration across IT, security, legal, finance, and application business owners. As such, organizations can take a holistic, proactive approach to managing SaaS risk, access, and spend—all without disrupting the pace of modern productivity.

What is SMP?

SaaS management platforms (SMP) centralize and automate the management of enterprise SaaS applications. While capabilities and features vary from vendor to vendor, SMPs often support IT, finance, and operations teams with workflows related to SaaS application lifecycle management.

Some SMPs focus on SaaS spend management, supporting license management and renewal processes, while others extend to SaaS security management by integrating with other security technologies, such as CASBs.

Sample SMP vendors include BetterCloud, Torii, Trelica, Productiv, Vendr, Zluri, and Zylo.

“Setting up Nudge Security was super straightforward. I really love it compared to competitors that require a browser extension. Once we started the trial, it was a no-brainer for us.”

Robbie Trencheny
Head of Infrastructure, Cars & Bids

Compare Nudge Security to SMP

Shadow SaaS discovery
SaaS identity governance
SaaS coverage
SaaS vendor risk management
Automation workflows

Nudge Security

SMP

Time to value
Price to value

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The SMP challenge

Blind spots and lingering shadow SaaS

SaaS management platforms aspire to be the single source of truth for an organization’s entire SaaS estate, satisfying a broad range of use cases across IT, finance, legal, and security. But, are they living up to this expectation? Or, is this more myth than reality?

To evaluate the effectiveness of a SaaS management platform, start with visibility. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t see. While nearly all SMP vendors claim to address shadow SaaS through various discovery methods, the reality is that most SMPs rely primarily on other sources of known SaaS data, including identity and SSO providers, accounting software, network security tools like CASBs, and API integrations with a finite set of supported enterprise SaaS applications that you already know about.

While it may be of some utility for organizations to replicate and aggregate such data within a centralized repository, it ultimately offers only a partial inventory of managed and paid SaaS assets, leaving blind spots with regard to shadow SaaS activities. Thus, SMPs typically augment their data collection methods with the optional use of endpoint agents and/or browser extensions to monitor employees’ internet use, some going as far as logging keystroke data. Still, these invasive approaches fall short when employees use personal devices or simply opt to use a different browser.

As such, shadow SaaS persists.‍‍

An integration race to the bottom

SaaS management platforms often suffer the same design flaw as SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solutions: they require you to integrate the platform with each of your SaaS applications in order to perform any management or security automation. This not only requires prior knowledge of your SaaS estate, but it also leaves you at the mercy of an SMP vendor’s ability to build, maintain, and secure API integrations across an ever-changing SaaS vendor landscape.

While leading SMP vendors boast support for hundreds of enterprise SaaS applications, Nudge Security customers alone have discovered over 32,000 unique SaaS applications used by their workforces. This coverage gap is likely to persist as the SaaS market continues its strong growth.

If you read online reviews of SMP providers, you’ll see that one of the most common complaints is the lack of supported integrations for customers’ business-critical SaaS applications. Without this support, even the most robust and flexible IT automation workflow engine is left hamstrung, leaving IT organizations to resort to manual workarounds for unsupported applications.

Nudge Security: A holistic approach to SaaS security and governance

Nudge Security takes a holistic approach to SaaS security and governance—one that addresses emerging SaaS security risks and threats while also enabling IT and GRC teams to manage SaaS sprawl and automate SaaS governance. It creates a true, reliable single source of SaaS truth that aligns stakeholders across the organization. Explore the advantages of Nudge Security:

Discover true shadow SaaS discovery.

In a matter of minutes, Nudge Security discovers your entire SaaS inventory: known and unknown applications, SaaS identities, MFA and SSO status, resources, SaaS-to-SaaS OAuth connections, user activities, and much more.
nudgesecurity.io home dashboard

Manage and secure 100% of your SaaS estate—not just the 1%.

Nudge Security classifies and prioritizes high-value SaaS applications, so you can proactively monitor your overall SaaS attack surface at it evolves. OAuth risk scores and SaaS supply chain breach alerts uncover actionable areas of focus, and SaaS security events can be sent to SIEM or other security analytics tools.

Engage your workforce in smart SaaS governance.

Work with your employees—not against them—to strengthen your SaaS security posture. Our workflow automation enables highly orchestrated engagement, nudging application owners and users to take simple, yet effective steps at the right moments to help ensure safe, compliant SaaS adoption and use.

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