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SaaS has revolutionized how teams work.
But with that flexibility comes one massive tradeoff: access sprawl.
Employees are logging into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of cloud apps - often without oversight.
And where there is uncontrolled access, there is risk.
Let’s break it down.
SaaS access refers to the ability of users, employees, contractors, partners, and even nonhuman identities to authenticate into SaaS applications like Google Workspace, Salesforce, Slack, and hundreds more.
It includes:
In a perfect world, this is all tightly managed.
In reality?
It’s chaotic.
Shadow IT, abandoned accounts, misconfigured permissions... these are just a few of the threats lurking in your SaaS stack.
On the flip side, SaaS access control is the practice of managing who can access your SaaS applications, what they can do once inside, and how that access is granted, monitored, and revoked.
Security pros typically classify access control into three models:
The data owner decides who gets access.
Think of a Google Drive folder shared directly with someone.
It is simple, but hard to scale securely.
This is top-down, rigid, and governed by policies.
Mostly used in high-security environments like government or healthcare.
In RBAC, access is based on a user's role - HR, Sales, Engineering, etc. making it scalable but vulnerable if roles aren’t well-defined or maintained.
Modern systems increasingly combine these with attribute-based access control (ABAC), where access decisions use context (device type, location, time of day, etc.).
Below is a chart comparison of the three access control models so you can easily see the differences.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) dominates the enterprise SaaS world.
Why?
Because it is easy to implement. At least on the surface.
Assign roles, define permissions per role, and off you go.
But RBAC quickly breaks down when:
This is where most organizations fall short.
RBAC works, but only if paired with continuous monitoring and enforcement.
Traditional access control relies on IAM or SSO tools.
But these solutions only secure what they know about.
The problem?
They miss the unmanaged apps, rogue OAuth grants, and idle accounts no one is watching.
To truly gain control over SaaS access, you need to:
Perimeters is a SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) platform designed for modern environments.
With API-based discovery and automation at its core, Perimeters helps security teams:
This is how Perimeters stacks up against traditional IAM tools.
It is agentless.
It is fast.
And it doesn’t just give you visibility, it gives you control.
SaaS access control.
SaaS access control is no longer just an IT hygiene issue, it is a board-level security priority.
As organizations scale their cloud app footprint, the need for automated, intelligent access control grows with it.
You can’t secure what you can’t see.
And you can’t manage what you don’t understand.
Start your 30-day free trial with Perimeters and see what true SaaS access control looks like.
