Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is an emerging trend in the realm of cybersecurity. But what exactly is it, and why is it becoming so crucial for organizations today?
Understanding DSPM
DSPM is an approach to data security that addresses one of the most intricate challenges in today’s cloud environments: knowing where all your data resides and ensuring it’s adequately secured. In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, sensitive data is scattered across multiple clouds, stored in various environments, and managed by different cloud storage technologies.
Why DSPM Matters
1. Comprehensive Data Visibility: DSPM provides a holistic view of all data, both known and unknown. This includes its type, location, ownership, access rights, and security posture.
2. Addressing the Innovation Attack Surface: With the rapid proliferation of cloud technologies, there’s a new risk landscape termed the “Innovation Attack Surface.” This refers to the accidental risk creation by well-intentioned individuals like developers and data scientists. DSPM is the answer to mitigating threats to this new attack surface.
3. Bridging the Security Execution Gap: Traditional data security methods are struggling to keep up with the vast, dynamic nature of cloud data. DSPM helps bridge this gap, ensuring that security teams have the tools and expertise they need to support rapid data-led value creation securely.
Key Features of a Robust DSPM Solution
A mature DSPM solution should offer:
- Global Data Visibility: It should provide insights into all data, including its type, location, owner, access, and security posture.
- Data Hygiene: This involves remedying misplaced, redundant, and obsolete data and setting relevant policies for continuous monitoring.
- Data Security Risk Management: Prioritizing security issues based on the data risk profile and detecting and remedying overexposed, unprotected, and misplaced data.
- Data Access Governance: Identifying all users, roles, and resources with access to sensitive cloud data stores and enforcing their privileges.
- Privacy & Compliance: Detecting and remedying regulatory and industry compliance violations and generating audit-ready compliance reports.
The Business Benefits of DSPM
Implementing DSPM can offer numerous advantages:
- Prevention of Sensitive Data Exposure: By focusing on the data and identifying all known and shadow data, DSPM shields cloud data from both internal and external threats.
- Support for Value Creators: DSPM, with its automated data security policy validation and enforcement, allows security teams to empower cloud data users to innovate while ensuring data remains secure.
- Reduced Cloud Costs: By identifying and eliminating redundant data, organizations can save on cloud storage costs.
Choosing the Right DSPM Solution
When selecting a DSPM solution, it’s essential to look for features like autonomous cloud-native discovery & classification, continuous discovery, breadth and depth of coverage, and a robust data security policies framework. The solution should also be easy to integrate with existing workflows and tools, ensuring a seamless experience for the organization.