by Lindsay Nash | Mar 17, 2026 | Articles
In today’s SaaS landscape, security is no longer a technical afterthought. Buyers must be vigilant and knowledgeable about a software’s stated security features and compliances.
Consider Gartner’s 2025 Software Buying Trends survey, which illustrates the growing importance of security. The number of buyers who cite managing and preventing security threats as a top business challenge increased by 46 percent over the previous year. Mitigating security vulnerabilities is now the leading concern when purchasing software.
It no longer matters how feature-rich or user-friendly a platform may be. If it is not secure, buyers will not move forward.
For organisations that don’t have a cybersecurity specialist on their procurement team, it’s becoming increasingly critical to understand which security standards matter and which claims are just marketing babble.
We’ve put together a comprehensive SaaS security checklist to help you cut through the noise. Whether you are reviewing awards management software or any cloud platform, you can use this resource to help you understand what cybersecurity features you need, what the terminology means and how to evaluate any SaaS vendor with confidence.
Use the following checklist as a practical framework when assessing any platform.
What to look for: Encryption protects your data from being read by unauthorised parties — both while it is being transmitted and while it is sitting at rest in a datastore.
Why it matters: Unencrypted data in transit is vulnerable to interception. Unencrypted data at rest can be exposed in a breach. Both are unacceptable for platforms handling sensitive submissions, personal details or commercially confidential information.
Read more: Award Force protects all data in transit using TLS 1.3 with AES-256 bit encryption and SHA-256 signed certificates. All data at rest is stored encrypted by default. Learn more about our data protection.
What to look for: A robust role-based access control (RBAC) system ensures that each user can only see and do what they are supposed to, and nothing more.
Why it matters: Overly permissive access is one of the most common causes of internal data exposure. Whether accidental or malicious, the risk of a user accessing data outside their purview should be minimised by design, not by trust alone. When setting up roles and permissions, it’s important to consider the principle of “need to know”.
Read more: Read about our granular controls over user roles and permissions.
What to look for: MFA adds a second layer of identity verification beyond a password, such as a one-time code sent to a mobile device or generated by an authenticator app.
Why it matters: Passwords are routinely compromised through phishing, credential stuffing or data breaches. MFA significantly reduces the risk of unauthorised access even when a password has been stolen.
Read more: Governance, risk and control: Integrated safeguards in award programs
What to look for: Where your data lives, and how that infrastructure is secured, matters enormously.
Why it matters: Cloud infrastructure security is foundational. Platforms built on well-architected, enterprise-grade cloud environments inherit significant security controls. Equally important is data residency: regulations such as GDPR, CCPA and Australia’s Privacy Principles specify where data can and cannot be stored.
Read more: Data residency: What you need to know
This is where marketing claims are validated or exposed. Reputable cybersecurity certifications require independent, third-party verification — they cannot simply be self-declared.
Key certifications to ask for:
Pro tip: Don’t just ask whether a vendor holds a certification—ask to see the certificate. Reputable vendors publish downloadable certificates on their security or trust pages. If they can’t or won’t share documentation, treat that as a red flag. Also, be wary when vendors claim to be ISO or SOC2 certified, but really it’s just their hosting partner (AWS, Azure, etc) who actually holds that certification.
Read more: Award Force holds all of the above certifications, including ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, Cyber Essentials, PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance, each backed by downloadable certificates. Visit our Trust Centre.
What to look for: Depending on where your users are based, your organisation may be subject to one or more data privacy regulations.
Why it matters: A vendor who processes personal data on your behalf becomes your data processor under most privacy frameworks. That relationship must be governed by a formal contract. If a vendor cannot produce a DPA, they are likely not equipped to support your compliance obligations.
Read more: Award Force GDPR functionality
What to look for: Even with MFA in place, good password hygiene remains a critical line of defence.
Why it matters: Weak or improperly stored passwords are among the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in SaaS breaches. A vendor’s approach to credential management reflects the rigour of their overall security culture.
What to look for: Security is not a one-time achievement; it requires ongoing vigilance.
Why it matters: The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report consistently shows that organisations that identify and contain breaches quickly suffer significantly lower costs. A vendor committed to regular testing and patching demonstrates proactive security habits rather than reactive ones.
What to look for: Even the most secure platforms are not immune to incidents. What matters is how quickly and transparently a vendor responds.
Why it matters: Under GDPR, organisations must notify the relevant supervisory authority of a data breach within 72 hours. A vendor’s breach notification process directly affects your ability to meet that obligation. Ask specifically: “If you experienced a breach affecting my data, how quickly would you notify me and what information would you provide?”
What to look for: If the platform handles paid entries, registrations or transactions of any kind, payment security requires specific attention.
Why it matters: Storing card data is a significant liability. The safest approach is for a platform to pass payment details directly to a certified payment gateway and never retain them. Confirm that this is the case.
What to look for: An audit log is an unalterable, time-stamped record of actions taken within a platform. It is essential for accountability, compliance and incident investigation.
Why it matters: In the event of a dispute, a security incident or a compliance review, audit logs provide verifiable evidence. For awards programs in particular, where the integrity of judging decisions can be scrutinised, a complete audit trail also serves as a powerful trust mechanism.
Learn more: Audit logs in Award Force
What to look for: Resilience is as important as security. A platform must be able to recover swiftly from hardware failures, accidental deletions or ransomware attacks.
Why it matters: Cybersecurity for SaaS applications works both to prevent breaches and to ensure continuity. An awards program running on a mission-critical timeline cannot afford days of downtime.
What to look for: Most modern SaaS platforms connect to other tools via APIs and integrations. Each connection is a potential attack surface.
Why it matters: A platform may be highly secure in isolation, yet expose your data through a poorly secured integration. Ask vendors to confirm how third-party connections are authenticated and audited.
Collecting the checklist above is only the first step. Here is how to put it to work effectively during a procurement process.
Ask for documentation, not just claims. Any vendor can write “we take security seriously” on a webpage. Ask for downloadable certificates, published DPAs and links to independent audit reports. Reputable vendors are proud to share these.
Look for a dedicated trust or security page. Mature cybersecurity SaaS products maintain a public trust centre where certifications, compliance documentation and sub-processor lists are kept up to date. If a vendor does not have one, that tells you something. (See ours, for example)
Ask about their cybersecurity habits, not just their features. Security culture lives in processes and people, not just products. Ask: How often do you conduct pen testing? How quickly do you patch vulnerabilities? What security training do staff receive? The answers reveal whether security is embedded in the organisation or bolted on for marketing purposes.
Check their history. Have they experienced notable breaches? How did they respond? A vendor who has faced a security incident and responded with transparency, speed and remediation can actually inspire more confidence than one with no visible track record at all.
Verify data residency options match your compliance requirements. If your entrants or judges are based in the EU, you likely need data stored within the EU. Confirm this is not just a marketing claim but a configurable, documented feature.
Security is complex, but evaluating it doesn’t have to be. With the right questions and this cybersecurity checklist in hand, any organisation can conduct a confident, informed assessment of a SaaS platform—regardless of whether you have a cybersecurity specialist on your team.
It’s important to evaluate security as early as possible in the procurement process, so if there are red flags, you are not yet in too deep to consider alternative solutions.
If you are evaluating awards management software and want to see how Award Force measures up, visit our security page to review our full suite of certifications and download the supporting documentation.
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