Many companies are targeting enterprise companies for their next big deal. The problem is, that selling to enterprise companies comes with a host of challenges that make landing that contract a difficult task. One of the main challenges is meeting all of the security requirements when trying to close enterprise tech sales.
To successfully sell into the enterprise SaaS space, a software company needs to meet stringent security requirements from both a technical and process standpoint. Here is a list of what you need in place to successfully sell to an enterprise SaaS software company.
Technical Security Requirements
Data Encryption
There’s probably nothing more important to an enterprise organization from a security standpoint than data security. Data needs to be encrypted both at rest and in transit. To make sure you’re covering all your customer’s concerns, you need to understand the standards and terms used to describe encryption.
- AES-256 is valuable for data at rest. RSA would be a good choice for encryption keys.
- TLS and SSL are terms associated with encryption in transit.
- HTTPS is HTTP over TLS/SSL.
Encryption standards also change over time. Software companies offering SaaS to enterprise customers need to understand this domain and ensure all the appropriate data is encrypted.
Network Security
No matter how secure you think your platform is, bad actors will try to get to an enterprise company’s data through your system. If you’re a B2B SaaS company in this space, you need to have strong firewalls to filter and monitor traffic into your platform. You also need advanced intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS). These provide an extra level of alerting and detection against network threats.
Access Control
Another security concern is how your buyers access your platform. Implementing strong, multi-factor authentication mechanisms such as authenticators, one-time passwords, and more is really important for protecting access to key systems. Multi-factor authentication features should exist in portals and platform features to provide the best access control.
Enterprise systems usually expect Single Sign On (SSO) support, so having that capability is a plus. Additionally, requirements around role-based access control are usually quite robust for enterprise companies. They want to be able to manage users in bulk and ensure access flows smoothly as the organization changes. Enterprise companies often want to be able to control users via Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), so support for that may be needed.
System Telemetry
You can’t be in the room with every customer monitoring their activity, so you need a way to monitor security remotely. Applications and platforms need to have excellent logging, monitoring, and alerting so you can always keep an eye on your customer’s security.
Logs need to track user activity to aid in threat detection and help trigger alerts. Telemetry is also important in understanding any exploited attack vectors — areas where attackers can enter your network or system — and ensuring these are adequately addressed. Alerts should be able to notify anyone on the team day or night to ensure a quick response.
Platform Security
Just like security needs evolve, your platform will evolve to meet new customer demands. Every time you make an update, the code needs to go through security reviews. New projects need additional scrutiny and must be assessed for any vulnerabilities they could create.
Engineers need to fully understand typical attack vectors such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection and write secure code that protects from these from the beginning. The platform should only use secure libraries and frameworks and keep them up to date. Underlying systems running the software need to be regularly updated with the latest security patches.
Endpoint Security
It’s not just how your users access your software that affects security, but what they use to access it. Servers and user devices including work computers need to be secured. Updates should always be installed promptly to stay current. Anti-virus and anti-malware need to be applied to all endpoints. Mobile devices, if they are used for work, may require extra security.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Even if you have every security measure in place, you need to have robust disaster recovery plans in case something goes wrong. Data needs to be regularly backed up, and your services should be able to switch over to an alternate site should something happen. This could be a separate data center or alternate cloud provider locations.
The procedures for moving between locations should be practiced regularly so that if the time arises, the process can be followed with precision. The whole company needs to be involved in this business continuity plan to ensure the enterprise customer can be adequately supported with all their usual services from the software to paying bills.
Data Privacy
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to data privacy with many countries and organizations having differing requirements. It’s very important that your company is aware of regulations around data privacy including but not limited to GDPR and CCPA. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) needs to be protected, and data should only be collected about individuals after consent is given and the purposes of use are known. Data should only be captured for specific needs and never kept forever.
Process Security Requirements
Compliance and Certification
Compliance with industry standards is important because it tells the enterprise customer that some controls are in place to ensure security practices are being followed. Standards such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001 may be required before enterprise customers will agree to do business with you. These need to be paired with strong policies around security and privacy protection. These standards aren’t something you can put in place and forget about. They require regular audits.
Training and Awareness
Security is the responsibility of everyone in your organization. Employees need regular security awareness training and may need some additional training on data privacy. This goes for anyone who works for your company including contractors and other third parties. They need to be made aware of security requirements, and due diligence needs to be performed to ensure they adhere to all the regulations in place.
Incident Response
Just like you need a recovery plan, you should have a detailed incident response plan. The plan needs to instruct employees on what procedures are to be followed if there is a security incident. A team should be identified, detection mechanisms should be in place and well known, and the team should understand how to apply rapid containment and recovery procedures. They should also be versed in communication and coordination activities so the proper parties are made aware of the incident.
Don’t leave Security to Chance
There are many critical security requirements your organization needs to be aware of and follow if they want to be able to sell in the enterprise tech space. To successfully support the needs of an enterprise level, customer you need robust security in place and contingency plans for when things go wrong. Even once you have these systems in place, you need to conduct frequent audits to make sure everything stays in compliance.
Enterprise selling is hard. For more tips to land your next enterprise deal, explore our extensive resource center, view a webinar, or even watch your own demo on demand.
