Founders in Focus: Maor Bin of Adaptive Shield

Each month we’ll highlight one of the founders of Okta Ventures’ portfolio companies. You’ll get to know more about them and learn how they work with Okta. This month we’re speaking with Maor Bin, a co-founder of Adaptive Shield.

What is Adaptive Shield and what is your mission?

Today, with SaaS apps fast becoming the default system of record, CISOs and their teams are responsible for securing the organization from SaaS app risks. 

There are a staggering number of weak links that stem from the misconfiguration and misappropriated user permissions of SaaS apps. As the volume of apps, users and settings keep growing, so does the challenge to secure the SaaS estate for security teams. 

Our mission at Adaptive Shield is to equip CISOs and security teams with a solution that integrates with all their SaaS apps and gives them full visibility and control, continuously monitoring and remediating their security settings, all on a single pane of glass. 

Gartner has defined this category as “SaaS Security Posture Management” (SSPM) and, in September 2021, named it one of the 4 Must-Have Technologies That Made the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Security, 2021.

What were you doing prior to Adaptive Shield that led you to this moment?

Jony Shlomoff, our CTO and co-founder, and I have known each other for a very long time. We served together in the Israel Defence Forces, and we each have over 17 years of experience in cybersecurity. In working with security professionals day in and day out, we kept hearing about how SaaS security was becoming too complex. The lack of visibility around SaaS misconfigurations was a top concern, with most professionals acknowledging that “we can deal with what we see, but are scared of what’s beneath our radar”. 

These security teams were quickly losing control under a number of pressures: the constant addition of new Saas apps (and the skills gap in learning them), the high volume of settings and user permissions, and, with most app owners sitting outside of the security team, a general lack of visibility when new Saas apps joined the network. 

This pain point was constantly reiterated, which led us to come up with a solution.

So, what is Adaptive Shield’s solution? What challenges does it solve? 

While SaaS vendors provide robust, built-in security settings, it’s the organization's responsibility to make sure these settings are configured correctly.

Think about it, you have so many apps, and each app has dozens or hundreds of security settings, not to mention the user volume. Yet most organizations are handling this manually (an impossible task) or worse, not at all. 

As a SaaS app that instantly connects with any SaaS app, Adaptive Shield is all about automating this process by monitoring and assessing the risks caused by misconfigurations in all SaaS apps.

Why did Adaptive Shield want to work with Okta?

Okta is committed to creating a world where anyone can safely use any technology. This includes SaaS-based solutions, which have become imperative to businesses as they evolve and become more decentralized. This vision closely aligns with Adaptive Shield’s mission to eliminate risks that come with the growing use of SaaS applications. 

Together, Adaptive Shield and Okta reinforce the company’s SaaS security by providing full coverage, from the security posture to identity and access management.

How is Adaptive Shield working with Okta? What support do you look for in a corporate partner? 

Okta works with Adaptive Shield to identify and flag any application that is currently connected to Okta’s SSO but not yet connected to Adaptive Shield, and vice versa. 

This groundbreaking approach will enable security teams to ensure that their managed apps are secured by both solutions.

What trends do you expect to see in the SaaS Security industry? 

Based on our recent 2021 SaaS Security Survey Report, 85% of respondents cited SaaS misconfigurations as one of the top three risks facing their organization. They also responded that SSPM is the #1 priority for investment for the coming year. 

According to Gartner, by 2025, nearly 99% of security failures in the cloud will be human-driven. Complex SaaS environments only serve to make circumstances even more complicated. Our goal is to remove the confusion and make SaaS security maintenance simple and sustainable, giving you the tools to effortlessly protect your organization.

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