Data breaches rarely begin with sophisticated malware or elite hackers breaking through your firewall. More often, they start with a compromised employee account, an over-permissioned third-party application, a publicly shared Google Drive folder, or a departing employee taking sensitive files with them. 

As organizations increasingly rely on SaaS applications like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Salesforce, and Box, data has become more distributed — and significantly harder to protect.

The good news is that most breaches are preventable. By combining strong identity controls, continuous visibility, and automated security policies, organizations can dramatically reduce their risk before sensitive information ever leaves the business.

What Causes Most Data Breaches?

Despite headlines about "sophisticated" cyberattacks, most data breaches begin with preventable security gaps rather than advanced hacking techniques.

Attackers increasingly rely on compromised identities, excessive permissions, phishing, insider threats, and cloud misconfigurations to gain access to sensitive information. In SaaS environments, these risks are amplified as employees collaborate across Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Salesforce, Box, and hundreds of connected applications — creating countless opportunities for data to be overshared or exposed.

Preventing a data breach requires more than securing your network perimeter, especially today where notorious hacking groups (like ShinyHunters) specifally target organizations running on SaaS.

Organizations need continuous visibility into their sensitive data, identities, user behavior, sharing activity, and third-party applications. The following best practices focus on the controls that reduce the most common causes of modern data breaches while helping security teams proactively identify and remediate risk before sensitive information is compromised.

1. Discover and Classify Your Sensitive Data

You can't protect data you don't know exists, and you can’t begin to protect it when you don’t even know where it lives.

Sensitive information often lives far beyond official document repositories. Customer records, financial reports, source code, HR files, contracts, and intellectual property are frequently scattered across shared drives, collaboration tools, and cloud storage.

Start by identifying where sensitive data resides, and classifying it based on risk. Knowing which files contain personally identifiable information (PII), financial records, healthcare data, or proprietary business information allows security teams to prioritize protection where it matters most.

Without this visibility, organizations often spend time protecting low-risk content while their most valuable data remains exposed.

This is the first step. Simply knowing where your data is won’t protect it — you still need to complete the rest of the steps, but it’s crucial to get this one right.

2. Strengthen Identity Security and Enforce Least Privilege

Compromised identities remain one of the most common paths to a data breach.

Attackers increasingly rely on stolen credentials, phishing, MFA fatigue attacks, and session hijacking rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities. Once inside a legitimate account, they often appear indistinguishable from an authorized user.

Organizations should enforce phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA), regularly review privileged accounts, remove dormant users, and follow the principle of least privilege by ensuring employees only have access to the data required for their role.

Access should never be treated as permanent. As employees change roles or responsibilities, permissions should evolve with them in a flexible, dynamic, and granular way.

3. Continuously Monitor Data Access and Sharing

One of the biggest misconceptions in SaaS security is that data sharing is a one-time configuration. But, that couldn't be further from the truth.

In SaaS, permissions change constantly. Employees collaborate with contractors, vendors, customers, and partners every day, often creating new external sharing links or expanding access without realizing the security implications. 

When the engagement with these contractors, vendors, and third-parties has ended, they often stay shared on these company files containing confidential information.

Continuous data governance helps organizations understand:

• Which files are publicly accessible
• Who can access sensitive information
• What those people are doing with that information
• Which assets are shared externally
• How sharing permissions change over time

Rather than relying on quarterly audits, organizations should continuously evaluate data exposure across their SaaS applications to identify risky configurations before attackers do.

4. Detect Insider Risk Through User Behavior

Not every data breach originates from an external attacker. In fact, most don’t. 95% of cybersecurity incidents stem from the humans at the organization.

Employees, contractors, and trusted users can unintentionally — or intentionally — expose sensitive information. In many cases, warning signs appear long before a breach occurs.

Examples include:

• Large-scale file downloads
• Unusual access outside normal working hours
• Sharing documents with personal email accounts
• Accessing systems unrelated to an employee's role
• Sudden spikes in file exports

This happens across every org. And it doesn’t just pertain to current employees or vendors that have ongoing engagements with your company — it extends itself to former employees or previous partners as well.

DoControl research shows 94,000 assets remain exposed to former employees on average across enterprise organizations – individuals who can still access, modify, or share critical company data.

Behavioral monitoring that understands normal SaaS activity helps security teams distinguish legitimate collaboration from genuine insider risk while reducing unnecessary false positives.

5. Secure Employee Offboarding

Employee departures create one of the highest-risk periods for data loss.

Disabling an account in an identity provider doesn't necessarily remove access everywhere. Shared folders, third-party applications, OAuth connections, collaboration tools, and delegated permissions can remain active long after an employee leaves.

There’s a lot more that goes into a data protected, secure terminated employee offboarding procedure. A complete offboarding process should automatically:

• Revoke SaaS application access
• Remove external sharing permissions
• Disable connected third-party apps
• Transfer ownership of business files
• Review privileged access before termination

Closing these gaps prevents former employees from retaining unnecessary access to sensitive company information.

6. Govern Third-Party Applications and OAuth Access

Today’s organizations rely on hundreds of connected SaaS applications. DoControl data found that on average, an enterprise organization has 730 connected third party apps, of which 13% are risky and 14% are abandoned (which is worse – forgotten about AND still serving as an active attack surface!)

Many employees authorize productivity tools, AI assistants, browser extensions, and automation platforms without security ever reviewing the permissions being granted.

These integrations frequently receive broad access to email, documents, calendars, messaging platforms, and cloud storage. If an application becomes compromised — or simply requests excessive permissions — it can create a significant data exposure risk.

Organizations should continuously inventory connected applications, review OAuth permissions, remove unused integrations, and ensure third-party apps only receive the minimum access required.

Least privilege should apply to applications just as much as it applies to users.

7. Automate Data Loss Prevention and Policy Enforcement

Visibility alone doesn't prevent breaches. You need actual security controls that run 24/7 to keep the data safe at all times.

Many organizations discover policy violations or exposure points, but rely on security teams to manually investigate and respond. By the time someone reviews an alert, sensitive information may have already been shared externally or been compromised.

Modern Data Loss Prevention (DLP) programs should automatically enforce security policies whenever sensitive data is placed at risk.

Examples include:

• Revoking public sharing links
• Blocking unauthorized external sharing
• Quarantining sensitive files
• Notifying users about policy violations
• Triggering remediation workflows automatically

Automated DLP workflows and security controls dramatically reduce the time between detection and response, minimizing the opportunity for data exposure.

8. Build a Security-Aware Workforce

Just the way that visibility alone can’t prevent a breach, neither can the tech alone. Of course, vendors that have purpose built security products that can protect the data, but employees also must be aware of best practices.

Phishing, business email compromise, and AI-generated social engineering tactics continue to target employees because people remain one of the easiest entry points into an organization.

Security awareness should move beyond annual compliance training.

Organizations should regularly educate employees on:

• Identifying phishing attempts
• Safely using AI tools
• Handling sensitive data
• Reporting suspicious activity
• Following secure sharing practices

Creating a culture where employees understand their role in protecting company data significantly reduces human-driven security incidents.

9. Prepare for AI and Modern SaaS Risks

The SaaS landscape is evolving rapidly, especially with the adoption of agentic AI systems.

Employees increasingly use generative AI platforms, AI-powered assistants, browser extensions, and automation tools that interact directly with corporate data. While these technologies improve productivity, they also introduce new paths for sensitive information to leave the organization.

Organizations should establish clear governance around AI usage, monitor third-party AI integrations, review connected applications regularly, and ensure sensitive business information isn't inadvertently shared with unauthorized systems.

AI governance, AI SPM, and other AI-related security terms are all the latest new buzzwords, now making it one of the key pillars that must be considered in a growing security program. 

10. Build a Proactive, Layered Security Program

Organizations that successfully prevent data breaches don't rely on a single security product.

No single vendor solves every security problem. Not one. And the organizations that believe otherwise are not more protected — they are less. Because while they have been consolidating around a single platform, they have quietly accepted the gaps that platform does not cover.

Organizations who operate under the assumption that ‘we already have X product, so we don’t need Y’ are the most vulnerable. These vulnerabilities exist because organizations tried to consolidate coverage into the wrong tools – and had the assumption that one tool would cover every single use case or attack surface that exists today.

Security teams today need to combine multiple layers of protection, including:

• Identity security
• Least privilege access
• Continuous monitoring
• Insider risk detection
• Data Loss Prevention
• Automated remediation
• Security awareness
• Incident response planning

Most importantly, they shift from reacting to incidents after data has been exposed to preventing risky behavior before it becomes a breach.

A proactive security posture continuously evaluates users, data, applications, and sharing activity across the SaaS environment, allowing organizations to identify and remediate risks before attackers — or insiders — can exploit them.

Read more on what should be in your security stack: Building a Mature Security Program: The Tools, Processes, and Controls That Matter

How DoControl Prevents Data Breaches

Preventing data breaches requires more than visibility — it requires the ability to continuously identify risk and take action before sensitive information is exposed.

DoControl helps organizations secure data across Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Salesforce, Box, and other SaaS platforms by combining SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) + contextual Data Loss Prevention (DLP) + identity threat detection + automated remediation in a single platform.

With continuous visibility into sensitive data, user behavior, sharing activity, third-party applications, and access permissions, DoControl enables security teams to detect insider threats, eliminate excessive access, govern external sharing, and automatically remediate risky activity before it becomes a breach.

As SaaS environments continue to grow in complexity, preventing data breaches requires security that moves at the same speed as the business. Rather than relying on periodic audits and manual investigations, organizations can continuously monitor, enforce, and remediate risk across their entire SaaS ecosystem—turning breach prevention into an ongoing security program instead of a reactive response.

Conclusion

Preventing a data breach isn't about deploying a single security tool — it's about building multiple layers of protection that work together. As organizations continue adopting cloud and SaaS applications, data moves faster than traditional security practices can keep up, making continuous visibility, strong identity controls, proactive monitoring, and automated remediation more important than ever.

While no organization can eliminate risk entirely, those that continuously monitor users, applications, permissions, and sensitive data are far better positioned to stop breaches before they happen. The most successful security programs don't simply respond to incidents—they make them significantly less likely in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most common cause of a data breach?

Most modern data breaches begin with compromised identities, excessive permissions, phishing attacks, insider threats, or misconfigured cloud and SaaS environments rather than sophisticated technical exploits.

Can data breaches be completely prevented?

No organization can eliminate risk entirely. However, implementing strong identity security, continuous monitoring, automated DLP, and proactive access governance can significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of a breach.

Why is least privilege important?

Least privilege ensures users and applications only have access to the resources they need to perform their jobs. Limiting unnecessary access reduces the potential damage if an account becomes compromised.

How do third-party SaaS applications increase risk?

OAuth-connected applications, AI tools, and browser extensions often receive broad permissions to corporate data. Without regular reviews, these integrations can create unintended exposure paths for sensitive information.

‍