In SaaS-first environments, employees connect tools quickly and often grant wide-ranging OAuth permissions to make those tools work. Over time, these permissions can accumulate across your environment, exposing sensitive data and creating access pathways that IT may not even be aware of.
OAuth scopes, like full access to Google Drive or the ability to modify Gmail settings, are more common than many realize. When left unchecked, they increase organizational risk, especially as teams grow, change, or offboard users.
In this post, we鈥檒l look at high-impact OAuth permissions IT teams should keep an eye on, why they matter in SaaS environments, and how 探花大神 helps surface and manage these risks to support a more secure and manageable SaaS stack.
Why OAuth Permissions Matter in SaaS Environments
OAuth has become the standard mechanism for granting access between SaaS applications. It鈥檚 what enables users to connect tools like project management platforms, CRM systems, or file-sharing apps to core services such as Google Workspace without sharing credentials.
It鈥檚 fast, convenient, and widely supported. But for IT teams, it also opens the door to a less visible, often unmanaged layer of access risk.
In many SaaS environments, employees can authorize third-party apps with a single click. These apps then receive OAuth tokens, granting varying levels of access, from viewing calendar events to full read/write/delete access to Google Drive or admin-level privileges in a company directory.
These permissions are persistent. Once granted, they remain active unless manually revoked.
Without centralized visibility, IT teams often have no understanding of:
- Which third-party apps have been authorized
- What level of access they have been granted
- How many users across the organization have done the same
- Whether those apps are still in use or still needed
This creates a shadow layer of access that sits outside typical identity and access management (IAM) controls. Even if single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are in place OAuth permissions can bypass those protections. Because they are rarely reviewed, they can linger for months, even years after the original use case has faded.
Want to uncover the hidden dangers of unmanaged SaaS apps and secure your organization? Check out Why IT Should Care About Unmanaged SaaS Applications to learn more about the critical risks of unmanaged SaaS applications, including data leakage and security blind spots.
3 Key Risks of OAuth Permissions in SaaS-Heavy Environments
- Data exposure: Sensitive business data, such as documents, emails, and calendars, can be accessed by apps with overreaching scopes, even if they are no longer in active use.
- Lateral movement risk: Admin-level permissions granted via OAuth can be abused to move across services or escalate access within your environment.
- Compliance blind spots: Unmonitored access violates the principle of least privilege and complicates with standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR.
Want to simplify data compliance and ace your next audit? The IT Manager鈥檚 Guide to Data Compliance Hygiene reveals essential IT hygiene practices to help your organization stay secure and compliant.
OAuth permissions may not be as visible as user credentials, but they are just as powerful and dangerous when unmanaged.
The Most Common Risky OAuth Permissions
OAuth permissions or scopes define exactly what an app can access once a user authorizes it. While some are relatively harmless, others can grant broad or administrative control over critical business data. Many of these authorizations happen via Google Workspace, which remains one of the most widely adopted identity providers across industries.
Let鈥檚 go over some of the most frequently granted and potentially risky OAuth permissions observed in SaaS environments, particularly those connected through Google Workspace.
The OAuth scopes in the following list are used by applications when integrating with Google APIs. They aren鈥檛 designed to be clickable. Instead, they are part of the Google API system and are referenced in the backend when an application is requesting certain permissions from a user through the OAuth flow.
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive
Permission type: User
Risk level: High
This permission allows a third-party app to view, edit, delete, and create any file the user has access to in Google Drive, including team-shared drives or confidential documents.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- A compromised app has complete access to company data
- Often granted by productivity tools without real need
- Rarely revoked when unused
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user
Permission type: Admin
Risk level: High
Often used by admin-level integrations, this permission grants access to manage user accounts in your org directory.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- A breach could lead to user impersonation or privilege escalation
- Typically over-scoped for non-admin tools
- May persist unnoticed even after integration is deprecated
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify
Permission type: User
Risk level: High
This permission allows apps to read, send, and modify Gmail content and settings on behalf of a user.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- Apps with this permission can send emails, read inboxes, and even delete messages, which could be used for phishing or data theft.
- It opens the door for attackers to compromise or spoof email communications within your organization.
- Often overlooked, and can be silently granted by email-related tools.
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile
Permission type: User
Risk level: High
This permission grants access to a user鈥檚 profile information, including their name, email address, and other personal data stored in Google Workspace.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- It exposes potentially sensitive employee information, which can be misused for social engineering or phishing attacks.
- Apps requesting this permission often do so as part of onboarding processes, but it can be retained beyond useful lifetime.
- It may remain with apps that are no longer needed, increasing the risk of credential stuffing or impersonation.
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform
Permission type: Admin
Risk level: High
This permission provides full administrative access to Google Cloud services, which could include cloud storage, compute engines, and databases.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- A compromised app or malicious insider could gain access to critical cloud infrastructure and applications.
- It represents a major risk for cloud-based organizations, as apps with this level of access can significantly disrupt services or steal data.
- High-level administrative access should be limited and closely monitored.
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-vision
Permission type: Admin
Risk level: Medium
This permission provides access to Google鈥檚 Vision AI API, which can process images and videos to extract meaningful data.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- Higher-level access is granted, as the Vision AI API typically deals with analyzing potentially sensitive visual data, such as company images, logos, or private documents.
- Apps with this permission could access and analyze proprietary content, which could compromise privacy if misused or improperly monitored.
- Often granted to marketing, media, or AI-related tools, but the permissions can remain active even after the associated app is no longer in use or decommissioned.
OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.metadata.readonly
Permission type: User
Risk level: Medium
This type of permission reveals information about file names, locations, owners, and collaborators without showing actual content.
Why it鈥檚 risky:
- Helps attackers map your org structure
- Enables reconnaissance on project names or sensitive areas
- Not always revoked with offboarding
How 探花大神 Surfaces OAuth-Based SaaS Risks
Managing OAuth-based access is a critical component of scouring your organization鈥檚 SaaS ecosystem. 探花大神 simplifies this by providing IT teams with visibility into OAuth-based SaaS risks, helping them proactively monitor and secure user access to applications that rely on OAuth authentication. Here鈥檚 how 探花大神 SaaS Management surfaces these risks effectively:
Step 1: Discover OAuth Permissions Across Connected Apps
探花大神 detects and surfaces OAuth permissions granted by users across Google Workspace. Leveraging comprehensive discovery via the browser extension and native connectors, IT teams can gather granular visibility into third-party app access across the organization.
This discovery reveals what permissions have been granted, by whom, and to which applications.
Step 2: Categorize Risks by Permission Scope and Type
Once discovered, 探花大神 classifieds OAuth permissions based on:
- Scope (e.g., read-only vs. full access)
- Type (admin vs. user)
- Assigned risk level (low, medium, high)
For example:
- High risk: Full access to Google Drive or Gmail configuration.
- Medium risk: Read Gmail messages.
- Low risk: View-only access to Google Analytics.
This classification allows IT to focus on what matters most without wading through benign access requests.
Step 3: Understand Context Through User-Level Mapping
Every detected permission is tied to specific users. 探花大神 provides visibility into:
- The number of users who granted each permission
- The permission type
- The date of discovery
This user-centric mapping enables IT to spot patterns (e.g., multiple users granting high-risk access to the same app) or uncover legacy permissions tied to inactive accounts.
Step 4: Revoke Access Where Needed
探花大神 makes it easy to respond to risk by allowing IT admins to revoke OAuth permissions directly from the platform.
With a single action, you can remove all previously granted permissions for a given app from selected users. This helps eliminate exposure from unused or overly permissive integrations.
Step 5: Report, Monitor, and Improve Over Time
The next step is to move beyond one-time cleanups and establish a proactive posture toward OAuth risks. With exportable reports, organizations can:
- Track exposure over time by monitoring when risky permissions were first detected and how widespread they are across users.
- Prioritize cleanup efforts by sorting apps by risk level, permission type, or number of affected users.
- Facilitate stakeholder alignment by sharing clear reports with security, compliance, or department heads.
- Incorporate SaaS access into ongoing reviews by using permission reports during quarterly access reviews or SaaS license audits.
Ready to Gain Control over OAuth SaaS Risks?
探花大神鈥檚 SaaS management capabilities help IT teams surface shadow IT and SaaS security threats, including risky OAuth permissions, and take action where it matters.
today and bring clarity to the hidden layers of SaaS access across your organization.
