What is DSPM? Data Security Posture Management Explained

Today, sensitive data no longer sits in secured databases. The rise of cloud-native software development, adoption, and migration to cloud services make organizations more vulnerable than ever. Data protection is a shared responsibility and a data breach can mean disaster for any organization.

The recent news about WazirX facing a security breach and Disney getting hacked by a Russian hacktivist group reveals the state of data risk management in organizations. According to reports, 47% of companies have at least one storage bucket or database exposed on the internet. DSPM solutions use intelligent security automation and address areas that CSPM fails to address.

In this guide, we will cover everything you need to know about Data Security Posture Management. We will explore its benefits, compare DSPM vs. CSPM, and dive into the details. By the end of this post, you will know whether DSPM or CSPM is right for you, and if you need both for your organization. Let’s get started.

What is DSPM (Data Security Posture Management)?

Data Security Posture Management provides visibility into the infrastructure where sensitive data is stored or kept. It aims to help organizations improve their cloud security posture, cloud data movement, and cloud data protection. DSPM ensures that sensitive data is shared only with authorized recipients and identifies potential vulnerabilities associated with data storage, transmission, and retrieval. It mitigates them where found and helps organizations achieve a holistic view of their entire data estate.

Why do we need DSPM?

DSPM is a continuous process and it involves monitoring and overseeing data transactions and ensuring information compliance with regional data regulations. A DSPM solution can eliminate data silos and unify various data security efforts for SaaS applications and cloud workloads. Data Security Posture Management enables security professionals to confidently categorize, classify, and protect cloud data effectively. It provides clarity into how data access controls are used, where sensitive data flows, and how entities handle or manage misconfigurations.

DSPM enhances data management risks and makes appropriate remediation recommendations to resolve potential security issues rapidly.

How and when is DSPM used?

Maintaining a robust cloud security posture is essential for organizations and DSPM is the first step to that. Suppose you have sensitive data interacting between cloud services and applications. But you don’t know where the data originates, or how duplicated data is used later after an employee leaves the organization.

DSPM gives insight into safeguarding your critical information and analyzes how it is used. It discovers where both structured and unstructured data reside, enabling organizations with data discovery capabilities. DSPM helps organizations deal with data centers spread across multiple locations and formats. By leveraging advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and risk correlation, DSPM helps entities detect and respond to hidden threats.

Alert fatigue, reputational damages, and compliance violations all stem from poor data integrity and accuracy. DSPM solutions reduce data risks in today’s evolving data risk landscape. Modern data management has become vital for every business, so DSPM is used wherever organizations implement cyber security and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions.

Difference Between DSPM vs CSPM

While both DSPM and CSPM look similar at first glance, they serve different purposes. CSPM focuses on securing cloud infrastructure and assets while DSPM emphasizes sensitive data protection. One cannot exist without the other, which is why DSPM is a great complement to CSPM solutions.

Below is a list of key differences between DSPM vs CSPM:

6 Key Components of DSPM

DSPM enables deep visibility into your sensitive data and reveals how it is accessed. DSPM solutions contain several components that help you do this, which are as follows:

1. Data Discovery

Find missing and hidden sensitive data across single, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. DSPM’s data discovery feature combines Machine Learning and AI technologies to automatically find sensitive data where it resides. You will even uncover data in places where you never thought it existed!

2. Data Classification

DSPM helps you clean up unorganized data, structure, and transform it. It does so through data classification. Data classification via DSPM solutions can be based on the sensitivity level, like public, internal, confidential, or restricted. There are different modes of classification and many DSPM solutions offer appropriate access security controls or access restrictions for your sensitive data.

3.  Access Control

DSPM enforces the least privilege access control automatically and allows only authorized users to access sensitive data. It scans for suspicious access patterns, monitors compromised credentials and looks for insider threats. Since it’s AI-driven and powered by intelligent automation, there is no need to worry about data being unexpectedly intercepted or falling into the wrong hands.

4.  Identity and Access Management (IAM) + Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

DSPM can integrate with IAM to manage cloud identities and user access permissions. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) uses real-time data analytics and AI-driven automation to monitor endpoints and secure them against various cyber threats. DSPM ensures consistency across data security, compliance policies, and endpoint security. It can ingest with SIEM to gain additional context for analysis and provide insights into an organization’s data assets.

5.  Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is just as important as data security. It is the gold standard of preventing data breaches. Organizations can prevent exfiltration attempts, enforce granular security policies, and prevent data leaks. DLP technology with DSPM can enrich data flow analysis and is great at identifying data security risks and attack paths.

6.  Threat Remediation

Threat remediation involves eliminating all the risks associated with data storage, management, and transmission. DSPM continuously monitors your data security environments in real-time and resolves policy violations. It’s great at conducting regular risk assessments and can revoke unnecessary user access privileges. DSPM automatically encrypts sensitive data, protects vulnerable systems, and fixes simple security issues without requiring any manual human intervention.

How Does Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Work?

DSPM enables organizations to improve their data governance and compliance standards by reducing risks across multi-cloud environments. In today’s world, DSPM is used to protect data, finances, and safeguard organizations from various reputational threats. Continuous monitoring of data can help prevent data breaches early on.

DSPM works in three stages:

1. Data identification and classification
2. Data risk detection
3. Data threat remediation and prevention

What are the Benefits of DSPM?

DSPM offers organizations the following benefits:

• Build a zero-trust security architecture (ZTA) and keep business operations running smoothly. DSPM classifies sensitive data and immediately identifies critical data security risks; it rapidly restores apps and workloads after a security incident so that organization’s can resume business as usual without any compromises

• DSPM automatically integrates with security and data management to improve cyber defenses. Organizations can implement cyber vaulting and prepare better for future threats. DSPM provides comprehensive data restoration capabilities.

• It identifies protection gaps for critical workloads and generates actionable cyber recovery risk reports, all of which are delivered directly to compliance teams.

Data Security Posture Management Challenges

The most common data security posture management challenges faced by global organizations are:

1. Increasing Data Complexity

Setting up the right tools, customizing configurations, and incorporating new technologies into your latest infrastructure can be a costly affair. The cloud is constantly scaling up which adds new data volumes and formats to the mix. Organizations have a tough time keeping up.

2.   Limited Coverage

Most DSPM solutions do not provide comprehensive coverage of all attack surfaces and vectors. There is limited visibility and DSPM solutions lack threat intelligence, user behavioral analytics, and penetration testing features.

3.   Customization

Ready-to-use DSPM tools don’t provide enough room for data management customization. Automated data security platforms are known to generate false positives and increase alert fatigue.

What are the DSPM Best Practices?

Here are the top DSPM best practices for CISOs in every organization:

1. Data Asset Cataloging 

As a core part of your DSPM strategy, it is important to catalog all your data assets. Data asset cataloging builds a thorough catalog of all your assets, including shadow data assets. Whether it is a duplicate copy, private backup, or belonging within multi-cloud, hybrid, private, or SaaS applications – data asset cataloging will discover and catalog resources, instances, and workloads where data exists.

2.  Data Landscape Analysis

Data landscape analysis involves discovering and classifying both structured and unstructured data that are available in diverse formats. High data volumes that are unorganized create unprecedented issues and data landscape analysis takes care of this. Organizations must use AI, NLP, and advanced technologies to map out their data landscape and acquire a holistic overview of the estate.

3.  Continuous Risk Assessment and Auditing

Effective DSPM configuration management and planning requires performing continuous risk assessments and audits. Regularly monitor data stores and check their activities against the latest industry regulations and standards. Continuous risk assessments also help professionals stay on top of the latest risks, improve collaboration, enhance data accuracy, and satisfy stakeholders.

4.  Integrations with Other Technologies

Great DPSM includes seamless integrations with your existing security tech stack. Your DSPM strategy will incorporate and work effectively with other technologies such as CASBs, SIEM, IDPs, and security analytics. All these solutions will work together to restrict unauthorized data access, set up responses and alerts, and enforce data handling policies regarding minimizing errors and credentials misuse.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Use Cases

Here are the five top data security posture management use cases:

1. Data Lifecycle Security Management

DSPM solutions continuously stream data from systems to services and cloud-native applications. Transmission flows at scale can create security challenges and risks as data is constantly transmitted.

DSPM solutions enable organizations to ensure optimal data lifecycle security. Via data mapping and understanding data lineage, it traces data origins and analyzes how information flows across different systems and solutions. This involves tracking changes, duplicates, and any major data transformations as well. Organizations also get insights about their data access governance controls and privacy management workflows.

2.  Misconfiguration Remediation

Misconfigured data assets can compromise your data security posture and are the leading cause of data breaches. Hence, resolving misconfiguration issues and enforcing robust data security posture rules can help.

DSPM solutions help eliminate false alerts, narrow down the focus to only sensitive data assets, and auto-remediate security violations.

3.  Prevent Unauthorized Data Access

DSPM solutions prevent data leaks and unauthorized assignment of roles, access permissions, and other privileges. They enable access entitlements monitoring, access governance, and help implement secure data access policies. Organizations can combine regulatory intelligence and access intelligence via DSPM to gain additional insights into their cloud infrastructure. They further help by implementing the least-privilege access principle and isolating inactive or overprivileged accounts.

Why SentinelOne for Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)?

SentinelOne is the world’s most advanced autonomous AI-driven cyber security platform designed to boost your organization’s data security posture. Singularity™ Identity provides proactive, intelligent, and real-time defense for your identity infrastructure attack surface. SentinelOne plays a critical role in preventing Active Directory misuse, builds cyber resilience, and thwarts attack progression.

It comes with a unique Offensive Security Engine that closes gaps in Entra ID that most adversaries exploit and provides Verified Exploit Paths™. Singularity™ Cloud Security (CNS) from SentinelOne is an agentless CNAPP solution that automates the red-teaming of security issues and presents evidence-based findings.

Below are some of its core features and why it’s ideal for Data Security Posture Management:

• Advanced identity threat detection & response for domain controllers, unmanaged endpoints, and OS devices
• Misdirects adversaries and enforces advanced deception for identity assets
• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Cloud Data Security (CDS), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM), Cloud Detection & Response (CDR), Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Scanning, and more
• Agentless vulnerability management and 1-click threat remediation
• Patented Storylines technology that empowers organizations with rapid threat-hunting capabilities and deep infrastructure visibility
• State-of-the-art cloud data forensics, custom STAR rules, and PurpleAI, your personal cyber security analyst
• CNS provides full asset inventory and easy-to-navigate graph explorer in the cloud environment; it automatically returns immediate observability and comprehensive security for your entire and ever-changing cloud estate
• Multi-cloud compliance support for standards such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, NIST, and many other regulatory frameworks
• Easy customer onboarding process and provides deployment templates for environments like Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Digital Ocean

SentinelOne gives you a detailed overview of your cloud resources within its native Cloud Service Provider console. Depending on the nature of the misconfiguration, it generates impact statements and allows security teams to effectively prioritize and remediate data-centric threats.

How to Choose a DSPM Tool?

Here are key considerations for selecting the right DSPM tool that aligns with your cloud security requirements:

1. Learning Curve – The DSPM tool you select must have a low learning curve. If it’s hard to use, it can overwhelm new users or those who come from non-technical backgrounds.
2. Compliance Support – Compliance management is a critical aspect of data security posture management these days. Modern DSPM tools should support adherence to various standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, NIST, CIS Benchmark, and others.
3. Cloud-Native Application Protection – Good DSPM tools are also state-of-the-art Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP). Because DSPM works with CSPM, these solutions will incorporate various aspects of cloud security such as cloud workload protection, Infrastructure as Scanning (IaC), vulnerability assessments, and other features. SentinelOne is a leader in the DSPM segment in that regard and covers all your bases.
4. Budget, Scalability, and Flexibility – Most organizations prefer no vendor lock-ins when investing in a DSPM solution. DSPM vendors should provide a free trial and let users test out different features. That way, you find out which solution is the best fit for your organization. Your budget and flexibility to adapt DSPM to changing work environments are also critical factors to consider.

Conclusion

Implementing DSPM is not a one-size-fits-all approach and every organization’s needs will vary. By considering the pros and cons of each tool, you can evaluate them and find out what works best for you. However, the right DSPM solution can greatly enhance your cloud security posture and set you up for success. It will empower your organization to confidently navigate the complex cloud security landscape, ensure compliance, and prevent pitfalls by securing your cloud data with maximum precision and efficiency.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) FAQs

1. What is DSPM Security?

DSPM meaning is Data Security Posture Management and it involves the review and management of all your data assets. DSPM security entails monitoring visibility to sensitive data, finding out who has access to secured data, and tracking data flows.

2. What is the use case of DSPM?

DSPM’s biggest use case is how it helps security teams to classify, identify, prioritize, and remediate various data security threats. It enables them to work safely and freely with public and private cloud data without the need to micromanage assets.

3. What are DSPM tools available in the market?

The top 5 DSPM tools currently available in the market as of 2024 are:

1. SentinelOne CNAPP
2. Wiz DSPM with advanced license
3. Sentra Cloud Native Data Security
4. Symmetry Systems DataGuard
5. Varonis Data Security