The HR technology industry, or HRTech, has experienced rapid growth, with platforms streamlining everything from payroll and benefits management to talent acquisition and employee engagement. These systems handle vast amounts of sensitive employee data, including personally identifiable information (PII), financial records, and even health-related details tied to benefits administration.
While HRTech platforms offer efficiency and improved workforce management, they also present significant cybersecurity challenges. A data breach in HRTech can expose employee information, lead to compliance violations, and erode trust. Businesses are subject to significant public scrutiny and a breach of the systems meant to protect companies’ employees is simply not a good look.
Strong software security is essential to protecting sensitive data, ensuring compliance, and maintaining system reliability, while also giving businesses the benefits of increased digitization, automation, and AI. But ensuring software is secure doesn’t have to be complicated. Continue reading to learn about the best practices HRTech companies can implement to keep their software secure and compliant while ensuring they can focus as much as possible on other areas of their business, like new product development and customer growth.
Why HRTech Companies Are Vulnerable
HRTech companies process and store extensive employee data, making them a prime target for cyberattacks. In particular, HRTech companies provide products that companies use to manage their human resources needs, meaning HRTech companies are responsible for:
Protecting Sensitive Employee Data
HR platforms house financial details, tax records, Social Security numbers, and other personal data. Any compromise can result in identity theft, fraud, and regulatory penalties. Security must be built into software at every level to protect data from unauthorized access and misuse.
Ensuring Compliance with Data Protection Regulations
HRTech companies must comply with stringent data privacy laws such as GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2. These regulations require strict controls around data access, storage, and transmission. Failure to comply can result in heavy fines and reputational damage.
Reducing Cyber Risks
HR systems are lucrative targets for ransomware, credential stuffing, and supply chain attacks. Proactive security measures, including continuous vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and threat modeling, help detect and mitigate risks before they lead to breaches.
Maintaining System Reliability and Trust
Security failures can disrupt payroll processing, benefits administration, and hiring workflows. HRTech providers that invest in strong security practices not only protect data but also maintain trust with clients and employees who rely on these systems.
HRTech Software Security Best Practices
A robust software security strategy can mitigate key risks, but it can be difficult to know where to start and stop when determining your company’s approach to cybersecurity. To start, focus on the following best practices for HRTech software security:
Integrate Security into the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
Security is most effective when embedded in development, not added as an afterthought. Make secure coding practices, threat modeling, and automated security testing standard in every development cycle. Regular security audits can also help identify and mitigate risks before deployment. While implementing these processes takes time and effort, once they’re in place, they’ll save valuable time and money down the road by preventing costly rework of software and issues found once applications are live.
Encrypt Sensitive Data
Data encryption protects employee records from unauthorized access. Apply strong encryption standards, such as AES-256, to both stored and transmitted data to prevent breaches and meet compliance requirements.
Enforce Strong Access Controls and Authentication
Limit access to employee data to access through multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access controls (RBAC). Limiting data exposure to only those who need it minimizes risk and strengthens security posture, in other words, preparedness for cyber attacks.
Implement Continuous Vulnerability Scanning and Testing
HRTech systems must be continuously monitored for vulnerabilities because new known vulnerabilities are discovered regularly. Regular scanning of applications, third-party dependencies, and infrastructure allows teams to address security flaws before they can be exploited. Automated testing within CI/CD pipelines enhances security without significantly slowing down development.
Meet and Maintain Regulatory Compliance
HRTech platforms must align with compliance frameworks such as GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2. This includes logging access to sensitive data, maintaining audit trails, and implementing security controls that meet regulatory requirements. Automated compliance reporting reduces administrative overhead and simplifies audit preparation, essential for most HRTech companies given they’re often venture backed and/or need to demonstrate cybersecurity standard compliance to their customers.
How Application Security Fits Into HRTech Company Operations
Software applications are the backbone of HRTech, serving as the interface between HR professionals, employees, and integrated third-party services. Ensuring applications are secure requires more than just perimeter defenses like firewalls, code-level security is critical to protect HRTech businesses from breaches. Start with tools and processes that enable:
Proactive Vulnerability Management
Identifying and fixing vulnerabilities early in development reduces potential ways companies’ technology can be breached. While catching every issue before production isn’t always feasible, automated security scanning and security patching help maintain a secure application environment. Ongoing vulnerability management ensures that threats in live applications are quickly found and addressed.
Securing Third-Party Components
Many HRTech platforms rely on open source libraries and third-party integrations, which can introduce vulnerabilities if not properly managed. Software Composition Analysis (SCA) helps identify risks in external dependencies and prevent them from compromising security.
Protecting APIs
APIs facilitate integrations between HR systems and external platforms but are a common attack vector. Implementing authentication, encryption, and continuous API security testing mitigates the risks associated with API-based data exchanges.
SOOS Strengthens HRTech Software Security
SOOS provides a comprehensive application security platform designed to integrate seamlessly with HRTech development workflows. Here’s how SOOS enhances software security:
Comprehensive Application Security
HRTech applications rely on open source libraries. SOOS scans dependencies for known vulnerabilities and license compliance issues and provides recommendations for remediation, ensuring third-party components do not introduce security or business risks. SOOS is the only application security platform with deep-tree scanning to uncover vulnerabilities that other tools miss, deep in your application’s dependency tree.
A Unified View of Software Risk
SOOS provides a centralized platform for identifying vulnerabilities at every stage of software development and in live environments. With Software Composition Analysis (SCA), Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), Container Security, License Analysis, Governance and Compliance, and SBOM Management, SOOS offers full-spectrum protection for HRTech companies’ software applications.
Automated Vulnerability Management and Continuous Scanning
SOOS integrates with CI/CD pipelines to deliver real-time vulnerability scanning as software is developed, allowing teams to detect and address security risks as part of their normal workflow. For issues found in live systems, or that others need to address, prioritization features ensure that the most critical vulnerabilities are addressed first and integration with developer tools ensures tickets with issue details can be auto-created and assigned to responsible parties, streamlining remediation efforts without disrupting development.
Developer-Centric Security Without Compromise
SOOS is designed for ease of use, with simple setup, integrations with popular CI/CD tools, and clear, role-specific security insights. Unlimited scanning, transparent pricing, and no vendor lock-in allow HRTech teams to access the security they need without unexpected costs, rigid contracts, or the mental burden of having to determine when and what to scan. Teams simply get full, unlimited protection at every stage of development..
Automated Compliance Reporting and Regulatory Support
SOOS simplifies compliance tracking with automated reports aligned with GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2 standards. These reports provide transparency, streamline audits, and reduce manual compliance efforts, ensuring HRTech companies remain audit-ready.
HRTech Software Security: From Daunting to Doable
HRTech security is essential, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Protecting employee data, ensuring regulatory compliance, and mitigating cyber threats requires an integrated, proactive security strategy, but security intelligence and automation can simply issue identification and management, making software security an essential but manageable part of day-to-day operations. Embedding security into development, continuously monitoring for vulnerabilities, and securing application dependencies are key to protecting HRTech from software risks.
SOOS’s comprehensive and intuitive application security platform helps HRTech companies strengthen software security without adding complexity. To explore how SOOS can support your HRTech company’s software security, contact us or try SOOS for free today.
