What is Data Security Posture Management? DSPM Meaning

What is Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)? DSPM is a security solution that enables enterprises to discover and classify structured and unstructured data across all file storage locations, such as cloud applications or on-premises. As it scans each file, it provides critical information about it, such as the user permissions attached to it or where it’s located.

Its use cases are widespread, ranging from data retention and destruction, to safeguarding sensitive information, as well as maintaining compliance. With organizations now responsible for petabytes of data, spanning Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to intellectual property, a DSPM solution has become a critical tool in administrators’ endless fight to mitigate threats to data. 

Data Security Posture Management is a newer field that has quickly gained momentum over the past few years. The core philosophy has remained the same for DSPM – to identify risks concerning data and correct them – but the technologies behind it continue to improve by leaps and bounds, providing enterprises with more capabilities and better accuracy as time goes on.

Many DSPM solutions will offer automated remediation based on the risks uncovered during the scan, but most solutions require a Data Detection and Response (DDR) tool to carry out these actions. Few, like Forcepoint Data Security Posture Management, powered by Getvisibility, provide built-in automation for dozens of activities like data duplication or data permission changes, and action them in near real time.

Aiding that automated remediation is workflow orchestration, which enables administrators to pre-determine who is responsible for which groups of data. The enhanced accountability makes it easy to define ownership for data sets and sources within the organization, which in turn simplifies stakeholder alignment around the actions performed on each asset.

There are various other capabilities included in a DSPM that largely center around discovering data, cataloging it and auditing for compliance with regional regulations or industry standards. However, its core functionality can be boiled down to maintaining visibility of data to reduce risk of a breach or non-compliance.

DSPM shines as a proactive approach to data security, helping businesses uncover risks before they turn into threats and letting them automate remediation. When combined with a reactive data security solution such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP), organizations can begin to address the entire lifecycle of their data.

Modern organizations face an all-too-common challenge: safeguarding data.

Structured and unstructured data is littered across Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) locations and on-premises storage, making it difficult to get a handle on where the most important and sensitive information is.

To add to the complexity, users are accessing this data everywhere from managed and unmanaged devices, anywhere in the world. This only exacerbates the difficult balance of preventing data breaches and leaks while allowing for broad access to data, all while maintaining and auditing for compliance.

Data Security Posture Management was created to make this ongoing process of discovering data, classifying it, safeguarding it and remediating any risks surrounding it much easier.

Without a DSPM solution, organizations may struggle to gain visibility of exactly who has access to which data. That could lead to a variety of risks, such as:

• Dark data existing without administrators’ knowledge.
• Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial (ROT) data using unnecessary resources.
• Account compromise giving broad access to sensitive or proprietary data.
• Non-compliance due to the inability to satisfy auditors’ requirements.

DSPM solutions have a variety of features and capabilities, with many being standard and others only available from certain vendors.

It is always important when evaluating DSPM vendors to consider the entire portfolio they have to offer. Data Security Posture Management is rarely, if ever, evaluated in a vacuum, and enterprises must take into consideration functionalities of other platforms within the data security technology stack and how they may be mutually beneficial to each other.

Data Discovery: Continuously discover data across cloud, network and on-premises storage to uncover and catalog every piece of data your organization has. Forcepoint DSPM can scan 300 files per second across 50+ file types, with that rate scaling through integration with multiple sources such as SaaS and IaaS.

Data Classification: Determine criticality, risk, user permissions and other key indicators to classify data accordingly. Forcepoint DSPM uses artificial intelligence for highly accurate and efficient classification, improving its precision over time with the help of a 50-dimensional model that relies on machine learning.

Incident Remediation: Take advantage of a variety of controls to evaluate and regulate data as needed. Data controls should be able to use custom rules to match the unique needs and challenges enterprises face. Examples include data mapping, to assign data to certain categories, mislocated data remediation, to locate and move files stored improperly, and data archiving and deletion, to handle at-risk files that may be past retention period or fall under ROT.

Compliance Hub: Every DSPM should support the organization’s compliance goals through a tool that enables mapping of data and controls based on their compliance requirements. Forcepoint DSPM offers the Compliance Hub, which lets administrators define compliance requirements that will influence classification policy, create and edit taxonomy through highly granular data mapping, and audit the business’s ongoing progress in maintaining compliance.

Workflow Orchestration: Data is most often a collaborative asset and to avoid remediation being done in isolation, a great DSPM will support workflow orchestration through clearly defined accountability. This could be as simple as delegating – for instance, the finance department is responsible for proprietary financial information – and could also list the actions required should that data be found in, for instance, a cloud storage folder belonging to the software development team.

This is a post-ChatGPT world; where does artificial intelligence fit in?

Enterprises are responsible for petabytes of customer information and proprietary data. Knowing exactly where each byte is, its risk level and what that means to the business is a fool’s errand when relying solely on manual processes.

Artificial intelligence plays an important role in bringing highly accurate automation to data security. With the ability to scan continuously, organizations can now also classify in tandem. However, precision must be at the top of the list of criteria when reviewing DSPM solutions.

For DSPM to confidently incorporate it, AI must be able to handle a wide range of file types, from PDFs to video, as well as understand an even broader array of fields, so that it can assign the correct classification and adjust for compliance.

Forcepoint DSPM uses a 50-dimensional artificial intelligence model that uses machine learning to train itself from the data it ingests. The continuous training means the classification function will grow more accurate and efficient over time as it scales, enabling administrators to put more confidence in the solution and reducing the number of false positive alerts it generates.

DSPM software is rarely run in isolation from the rest of the data security technology stack. Enterprises should carefully consider how their data security solutions work in tandem to ensure they get the most value from their DSPM.

Data Security Posture Management is proactive by nature. The goal behind it is to get a fundamental understanding of where data lives, how users interact with it and whether there are any risks attached to it.

Because of this, technologies that provide control over the data identified by DSPM make a great pairing with it. Potential additions include:

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP is a powerful supplement to DSPM due to the reactive nature of the technology. DLP software enforces policies that govern how users can interact with many different types of data, with actions ranging from self-educating users about their mistakes to blocking the copying and pasting of sensitive data. The proactive threat hunting achieved in DSPM can directly inform policy configuration and management within a DLP to ensure data remains secure across the enterprise.

Risk-Adaptive Protection (RAP): Forcepoint Risk-Adaptive Protection continuously monitors user behavior to apply context to activity with the aim of stopping emerging threats. It adapts policies in real time based on how users interact with data, providing ongoing control over data throughout the business. Given the dynamic nature of RAP, the intelligence gathered by DSPM on what data is most pertinent or at risk is critical to ensuring policy adjustments are both necessary and accurate.

DLP for Email: An extension of enterprise DLP, email DLP enforces policies in perhaps the most critical channel of the business and the No. 1 source of data loss. DSPM can influence what information should be protected, ensuring that DLP for Email prohibits users or threat actors from exfiltrating data through outbound email.

Secure Web Gateway (SWG): The analysis gained through DSPM can fuel data security wherever people work – which most of the time means the web. SWG can block pasting of sensitive data in web applications, and DSPM can inform policy configuration to ensure they cover the correct information.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): SIEM software pools and analyzes activity from across the enterprise for logging and incident response. DSPM can improve the data set in terms of both volume and accuracy, providing even more precise insights.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): There are many threats to data security that come directly from the endpoint. EDR monitors and responds to threats on the endpoint in real time, and DSPM can support policy configuration to ensure the proper actions are taken should data be at risk.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): CASBs keep data safe in cloud applications and can continuously control data within them. DSPM can inform CASBs of what data to protect and which users should have access to it.

With more and more data being stored in cloud infrastructure or accessed via cloud applications, administrators are commonly asking themselves: What is the difference between DSPM vs. CSPM?

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) concerns the integrity of cloud infrastructure and applications. CSPM solutions will periodically review how cloud infrastructure and applications are configured to spot and fix misconfigurations, remediate emerging vulnerabilities and generally ensure access remains secure.

Since users regularly work with sensitive data within cloud applications, compliance is a key consideration within CSPM software. Tools can detect violations and recommend actions to regain compliance, while also assisting with audits for regulatory requirements.

Because data and the cloud so closely intersect, it’s easy to see why the two are often conflated. However, DSPM is chiefly concerned with the security and compliance of sensitive information across the business – wherever it is located. As many enterprises are storage-agnostic and take advantage of an array of locations to store data, DSPM is ultimately more valuable in protecting data across the enterprise.

However, as previously mentioned, DSPM cannot exist in a vacuum. Security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities are often the cause of data loss, and remediating those threats is just as important as putting policies in place to secure data. The question shouldn’t be what the difference between DSPM vs. CSPM is, but rather how can both technologies accentuate the best features of each other to provide the strongest data security posture for the business

There are a variety of security strategies, frameworks and methodologies that DSPM plays a central role in bringing to life.

Implementing Zero Trust: DSPM software provides insight into user permissions attached to files and assets, and this analysis is critical to adopting the principle of least privilege. Auditing user permissions is the first step to ensuring only users who need access to certain types of data have that access. Without DSPM, Zero Trust can still be deployed for access to public and private applications, but administrators may struggle with visibility into what specific data needs protection within those apps.

Reducing False-Positive Alerts: Data security can be difficult on its own, without alerts for ROT data taking up extra time and energy. DSPM helps administrators root out duplicates and otherwise non-essential information, while finding dark data that the enterprise may not have known about before. Together, it’s a recipe for better focus on protecting the data that means the most to the business, which in turn will result in fewer false-positive alerts.

Streamlining Compliance: Any organization, whether it is 20 employees large or a 10,000-person multinational, has difficulty with compliance. These challenges are exacerbated with manual data discovery and classification, and the hope that users respect the policies that come out of it. DSPM automates discovery and classification and can be paired with DLP to strictly enforce industry-specific and regional regulations, all while proving to regulators that the business is maintaining compliance, should they request audit materials.

Data Security Everywhere: Every enterprise should strive to secure data everywhere users access it. The first step to providing this level of security is knowing where your data is in the first place. DSPM gives enterprises total visibility and control over its data, from anywhere users access it.

The benefits of Data Security Posture Management can boil down to four outcomes.

Increase Productivity: DSPM makes data access and sharing more reliable and secure, resulting in better innovation and collaboration across the workforce. Also, administrators get time back from fewer false-positive alerts and through automating data discovery and classification.

Cut Costs: Automation enables enterprises to cut down the time and resources spent on investigations and remediation, without compromising on their data security. Similarly, a stronger security posture reaps dividends in not having to deal with the financial implications of a data breach or non-compliance penalty.

Reduce Risk: DSPM safeguards sensitive information to stop data breaches and leaks, thereby reducing risk across the enterprise. Furthermore, it finds data that was not properly categorized – or potentially even known about – to ensure dark data does not result in a security incident.