What is data security posture management (DSPM)?

Why is DSPM important?

As the old security adage goes, you can't protect what you can't see. Today, more than ever, it is critical for organizations to have visibility into their data and that data's security posture. The task has become increasingly challenging, however, due to the following reasons:

• The volume of data produced, consumed and stored by organizations is growing exponentially.
• Complex on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments have made data storage and usage increasingly difficult to monitor and manage.
• Shadow IT and cloud, application and network misconfigurations can result in accidental data exposure.
• Shadow data -- any data that is hidden from or unknown to a company's data security tools and policies -- isn't properly managed or secured and therefore could be exposed to vulnerabilities and attacks, and cause compliance issues.
• AI and machine learning adoption increases the amount of shadow data and the chances of data misuse. For example, employees or other authorized users might input data into a language-learning model without understanding the potential security and privacy consequences.
• Many industry and government regulations require companies to know where personally identifiable information and other sensitive data reside. Not having this information available can result in noncompliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

DSPM tools help combat these issues by providing visibility into where data resides, monitoring it for unauthorized use and exfiltration, and alerting security teams of any problems or security incidents to remediate.

DSPM use cases include the following:

• Find stale access. DSPM platforms discover and revoke forgotten or unused employee and third-party accounts that continue to have access to data.
• Label unstructured data. DSPM tools can track down and categorize data, which helps data loss prevention (DLP) tools more effectively prevent data exfiltration and exposure.
• Locate data informing generative AI (GenAI) models. Organizations need to understand what data is being used to train GenAI models and tools to ensure sensitive data isn't used incorrectly or leaked. DSPM tools can monitor this activity.
• Delete duplicate data stores. Companies often find that their data exists in multiple locations. DSPM platforms can discover stale data and delete it to free up storage space and reduce the attack surface.
• Prevent data exposure. With DSPM tools providing visibility into where all sensitive data resides, organizations can protect those data stores from unauthorized or over-permissioned accounts.
• Assist incident response. DSPM tools enable incident response teams to more quickly determine the fallout of a data breach by showing what data was exfiltrated and from what accounts.

How DSPM works

Data security posture management tools help organizations discover and classify data, perform risk assessments, conduct incident response, and prevent and remediate cybersecurity incidents.

• Data discovery. DSPM tools scan IT environments to find structured and unstructured data stores on-premises and in the cloud, including multi-cloud, hybrid, SaaS, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments.
• Data classification. DSPM tools classify data based on regulatory frameworks or data sensitivity levels. This enables organizations to determine appropriate account permissions and apply the principle of least privilege. Some DSPM tools perform data flow analysis and create visual data flow maps to illustrate how data moves and interacts across an organization's systems.
• Risk assessment and management. DSPM tools identify data use patterns and perform risk assessments. This enables companies to prioritize data security based on risks most relevant to them. DSPM tools look for issues such as cloud and software misconfigurations, excessive account permissions, and policy and regulatory compliance violations.
• Incident response and remediation. DSPM tools flag anomalous behavior based on data access and use, and alert security teams to initiate incident response, if needed. Some DSPM tools offer threat detection and response (TDR) capabilities, such as providing step-by-step instructions to help security teams address vulnerabilities or automating response and remediation workflows.
• Prevention and mitigation. DSPM tools' real-time, continuous monitoring of data helps security teams identify internal and external threats, enabling them to remediate issues before a data breach occurs. DSPM tools also help enforce and manage data security and compliance policies.

DSPM tools integrate with different technologies to strengthen an organization's security posture. These integrations include the following:

• Identity and access management. DSPM tools find stale accounts or over-permissioned accounts, so security teams can delete them or adjust privileges.
• Threat detection and response. DSPM tools can discover data security risks, which TDR tools can monitor or remediate as necessary to keep data protected.
• Intrusion prevention systems. DSPM tools detect suspicious and unauthorized data use, helping IPSes prevent further access and alert security teams.
• DLP. DSPM tools identify and classify data, enabling DLP tools to effectively prevent unauthorized data access and exfiltration and enforce data security policies.

Benefits of data security posture management

A DSPM approach provides organizations with the following benefits:

• Better data visibility. DSPM platforms help organizations understand where all their data resides, enabling teams to properly protect it. Lack of data visibility could result in attackers exploiting dormant data stores and identities a company never knew existed.
• Improved regulatory compliance. By classifying all data, companies can more easily comply with HIPAA, GDPR and other compliance regulations. DSPM tools also help simplify auditing because compliance violations can be detected and addressed quickly.
• Easier risk management. With DSPM tools providing visibility into sensitive data, locations and permissions, organizations can more easily assess their risk profile and prioritize where and how to adjust security controls and policies.
• Reduced attack surface. DSPM tools identify where data resides and locate old data stores. If companies have a complete understanding of their data attack surface, they can take measures to protect and reduce it.
• Find shadow data. DSPM tools discover data that employees purposefully or accidentally saved outside of approved locations.

Challenges of data security posture management

A DSPM approach is not without its difficulties. Challenges include the following:

• Configuration management. Each environment -- i.e., cloud, on-premises, etc. -- might have different security policies and classify data differently. This complexity can lead to inconsistent actions, especially when using multiple cloud service providers.
• Data storage complexity and scale. Companies with multiple environments should deploy a DSPM methodology carefully to avoid data misclassification issues, which could lead to data exposure and regulatory fines.
• Integration with legacy software and services. When deploying DSPM tools, companies need to understand whether and how they connect with legacy software and services to ensure data isn't misclassified or overlooked.
• False positives. Companies need to test DSPM tools at scale prior to deployment, or they could result in excessive alerts and missed critical incidents.

Data security posture management best practices

Follow these best practices to ensure efficient and secure data protection with a DSPM approach:

• Perform data discovery and classification. Understand where all data resides and ensure it's accurately and consistently classified across the organization.
• Get stakeholder buy-in. Determine goals and metrics and share them with relevant stakeholders to measure the success of a DSPM tool and the organization's overall data visibility program.
• Conduct continuous monitoring and remediation efforts. Continuously monitor IT environments to identify exposed data, misconfigurations, and shadow IT and data.
• Implement least privilege access. Ensure users can only access the data necessary to do their job. Reduce permissions wherever possible based on the principle of least privilege, complemented with role-based access control.
• Create clear security policies and procedures. Ensure employees understand their role in data handling. Create data security policies that outline procedures to keep sensitive data secure. Train employees about data security and related policies during security awareness trainings.
• Define security controls based on data classification efforts. Determine appropriate controls, such as encryption and data masking, to secure data based on its classification level.

What to look for in a DSPM product

When adopting a DSPM tool, evaluate the following:

• Can the tool scan and observe key data storage locations, both in the cloud and on-premises?
• How well does the tool provide visibility and control over data access?
• Does the DSPM tool have a metadata repository to find data, classify all data assets, fingerprint them so teams can track the data and its usage, observe usage and analyze permissions?
• How does cost scale based on how the tool approaches DSPM capabilities?
• Can it integrate with a variety of data security tools to enable easier admin overhead and policy control?

DSPM vs. CSPM

DSPM and CSPM are both posture management approaches, but they focus on different areas. DSPM focuses on data security, while CSPM focuses on securing cloud infrastructure.

Specifically, CSPM tools monitor cloud infrastructure, including VMs, containers, buckets, and PaaS and IaaS configurations, and can identify and remediate cloud misconfigurations. CSPM tools might offer data security features, but do not manage the security posture of the data itself.

DSPM and CSPM approaches are complementary and can be deployed together to improve an organization's security posture.