From OAuth to overexposed: 5 risks lurking in your stack
After JPMorgan’s open letter to vendors, the industry scrambled to recheck firewalls, tighten endpoints, and update vendor spreadsheets. Check. Check. Check.
But here’s the problem: none of that covers your SaaS stack.
Your users are connecting apps directly to core systems. Apps are talking to other apps.
And data is moving across environments without ever touching your network perimeter.
This is the modern SaaS supply chain: sprawling, identity-driven, and dangerously easy to overlook. While your third-party risk management might be airtight for infrastructure and managed service providers, it probably wasn’t built for OAuth tokens, app-to-app connectivity, or non-human identities.
Let’s break down five risks that most security teams underestimate and how attackers use them to slip past your defenses.
1. OAuth tokens bypass MFA – and they don’t expire
MFA is enforced through your identity provider (IdP). That’s great for users.
But OAuth tokens don’t trigger re-auth. They don’t care about MFA.
And once granted, they persist quietly, sometimes for years.
These tokens often come with overprivileged scopes and access levels that weren’t reviewed by security. They usually don’t show up in your SIEM unless the activity flows through a monitored endpoint or app.
2. Service accounts are powerful identities you’re not watching
Many SaaS platforms love to automatically create service accounts and delegate roles with elevated access during integration. They don’t log in like a person. They don’t trigger your alerting rules. But they often have access to settings, files, and sensitive data, and can operate across multiple connected systems.
These non-human identities rarely get the same scrutiny as your user accounts, which makes them perfect targets for lateral movement and stealthy persistence.
| Want more examples of these identity-based SaaS threats? Check out the guide: 5 ways SaaS supply chain breaches catch you off guard |
3. SaaS vendors update silently, and your exposure grows with them
You don’t control SaaS updates – your vendors do.
But rolling out changes is just one part of the equation. SaaS vendors push updates quietly, and unless they break something, you’ll rarely get notified. What about new scopes? Permission creep? Changes to how apps access or sync data?
This is where SaaS configuration drift becomes a supply chain problem.
You approved a secure config on day one. By day thirty, it may be doing something completely different, and your team probably doesn’t know.
4. Dormant vendors are still connected – and still dangerous
A tool was added for a quick pilot last quarter.
An integration that a former employee set up before they left.
A bot that hasn’t been used in six months but still has read/write access.
Orphaned vendors and forgotten integrations are the supply chain equivalent of keeping your backdoors unlocked. And they often retain full access, even when they’re no longer in use.
5. Your real suppliers aren’t going through procurement
Procurement policies are great, until someone installs a Slack bot, signs up for a Chrome extension, or connects a “free AI tool” using OAuth or API-level access that bypasses traditional review processes.
These tools don’t show up in your approved vendor list.
They don’t go through legal or security.
But they absolutely have access to business-critical data.
This is shadow SaaS, and it’s expanding your supply chain risk every time an employee connects a new app.
So how do you secure the part of the supply chain no one’s watching?
Today’s SaaS supply chain is sprawling, fast-moving, decentralized, and mostly invisible to traditional security controls. Apps get connected directly by users, AI tools plug into core systems, and OAuth tokens quietly bypass procurement, legal, and even identity governance.
That’s why Wing Security applies a layered, identity-first approach to securing the modern SaaS supply chain:
- SaaS & AI Discovery: Wing continuously discovers all connected SaaS and AI apps, including shadow tools added without review. With the industry’s largest SaaS database (350,000+ apps), Wing classifies vendors, maps access, flags AI data usage, and surfaces compliance indicators like SOC 2 and GDPR.
- Contextual Risk Management: Instead of flooding you with alerts, Wing highlights the risks that matter – like dormant vendors, overprivileged service accounts, and sensitive misconfigurations. Each risk is mapped to its real-world impact, so you can prioritize what to fix based on context, not just count.
- Identity-Centric Threat Detection: Most SaaS breaches start with identity abuse, via tokens, roles, or connected accounts. Wing monitors behavior across your environment, correlates it with threat intelligence, and alerts you early to suspicious access, misused privileges, or lateral movement across apps.
This shifts your third-party security strategy from static lists to a living, risk-aware defense — purpose-built for today’s SaaS-driven supply chain.
Your third-party risk strategy isn’t broken. It’s just incomplete…
You’ve secured your cloud infrastructure. You’ve locked down your endpoints.
But SaaS-to-SaaS integrations are now part of your supply chain attack surface, and they need to be treated like the critical exposure they are.
Legacy vendor risk tools weren’t designed for OAuth tokens, app-level permissions, or non-human identities. And they weren’t built for tools that your employees connect without telling you.
To manage today’s risks, you need continuous visibility, context-aware monitoring, and the ability to act fast when something shifts.
👉 Download the full guide. It’s short, practical, and packed with real-world SaaS supply chain risks and how to fix them.
Stay ahead of the next breach.