In the digital age, data security posture management (DSPM) has become crucial for organizations to safeguard sensitive data from cyber threats. Implementing DSPM involves assessing the security posture of data across the cloud environment to identify vulnerabilities and risks and implement security controls continuously. In this article, we explore DSPM’s key features, benefits, and challenges to increase awareness of its significance in ensuring data confidentiality, availability, and integrity.
What is Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)?
Data Security Posture Management provides a comprehensive approach to securing sensitive data by assessing the security posture of data across the cloud environment. DSPM offers visibility into the data stored, identifying vulnerabilities and risks, and implementing security controls to monitor and update the security posture continuously. DSPM-driven solutions assess compliance and governance requirements and then implement the required controls and configuration management, which can be dynamic and changing to cater to ongoing changes to business processes, data environments, and regulations.
Typical users of DSPM tools include IT departments, security teams, compliance teams, and executive leadership. These tools classify data by type, sensitivity level, and user access to provide better visibility. The policies aligned with the real-time risks to detect and allow instant remediation. Key features of DSPM include:
- Data discovery
- Data classification
- Encryption
- Access control
- Mapping data flows
- Managing vulnerabilities
- Automated risk remediation
DSPM tools enable organizations to monitor access management and associated costs to detect and remedy privacy and regulatory compliance issues. Organizations can identify and protect sensitive data and intellectual property through DSPM-driven processes that limit the attack surface and provide complete data visibility to gain trust from customers.
Features of DSPM
DSPM tools provide several features that enable organizations to manage their data security posture. These features are essential in securing sensitive data and providing better visibility.
Data Discovery and Data Classification
DSPM tools automatically inventory all data, discover shadow data, and classify data by type, sensitivity level, and user access. Providing better visibility into the data, organizations can identify sensitive data and intellectual property and limit the attack surface. Organizations can then align strategies and policies that match business needs and regulatory compliance requirements.
Encryption and Access Control
Organizations can use DSPM to encrypt and control access to sensitive and proprietary data. DSPM tools offer a secure way of managing data in transit and at rest. Organizations can encrypt data for improved security, secure critical endpoint access, and control user access to sensitive and proprietary data.
Managing Vulnerabilities and Automated Risk Remediation
DSPM helps organizations manage vulnerabilities and automate risk remediation. It provides visibility across the entire cyber infrastructure and automates the detection, classification, and prioritization of data risk. Organizations can track data flows and risk points across technology stacks continually. With ongoing monitoring and identification of potential risks, organizations can automate corporate risk assessment, risk identification, and risk assessment.
Access Management and Integration Issues
DSPM tools help organizations manage access to data across multiple cloud environments with varying levels of controls. DSPM tools enable organizations to restrict privileges and access control policies across all endpoints. Furthermore, the DSPM platform automates administrative tasks related to configuration management, access control, and security reporting.##Benefits and Challenges of DSPM
Implementing DSPM solutions can provide significant benefits to organizations. Organizations can improve their data security posture, identify vulnerabilities, mitigate risks, adhere to regulatory compliance, and prepare for incident response. DSPM enables continuous monitoring, which detects threats and vulnerabilities; this provides organizations with a proactive defense mechanism.
However, implementing DSPM solutions can be resource-intensive and require continuous monitoring, resulting in alert fatigue and false positives. Integration issues can also be a challenge in DSPM implementation. Organizations must assess their level of cybersecurity maturity before implementing DSPM and understand that it requires ongoing investment. The primary benefits of DSPM include:
- Improved data security
- Early the detection of data vulnerabilities
- Compliance adherence
- Incident response preparation
- Better risk management
DSPM implementation requires organizations to focus on securing their IT and data ecosystem holistically. DSPM stresses the importance of data backups, access controls, and encryption in minimizing the risk of data loss and consolidating customer trust.
BigID’s DSPM – A Unified Solution for DSPM
BigID’s DSPM platform offers a unified approach to manage data security posture across the multicloud environment. The BigID platform enables automatic inventory of all data, discovers shadow data, highlights and remediates access, manages vulnerabilities, and automates risk remediation. Therefore, BigID offers comprehensive data protection solutions, including data discovery, data classification, security analytics, data control, and compliance monitoring. BigID’s Policy Management tools cover several industries and regulations, including HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and PCI DSS, and enable organizations to develop, implement and validate policies for security, risk management, and compliance.
Among the critical features of BigID’s DSPM platform is Least Privilege Assurance, which eliminates overprivileged access issues. BigID’s DSPM can track and regulate access-based data visibility, user roles, and permissions to ensure that every person, system process and machine has the least privilege assurance. It also has continuous and scalable discovery mechanisms that help build the data inventory and track approvals at every step.
BigID offers several DSPM modules for individual products with unique features that organizations can use to address their data security posture and regulatory compliance requirements, including:
- The Dig Security Platform
- Veza
- TrustLogix Cloud Data Security Platform
- Symmetry DataGuard
- Cyera Platform
- Sentra