The Importance of Data Posture and How to Evaluate It
We’re all taught the core tenets of good posture. Straighten up, chin in, shoulders back – and act relaxed.
Data posture, while sure to be just as much of a balancing act, isn’t as straightforward a concept. However, it’s a critical one because it often dictates how susceptible a business is to data security risks. Luckily, technology is making it easier by the day to understand your data posture and correct it.
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What is Data Posture?
Data posture incorporates the strategic position of your organization concerning data security and governance, addressing a range of concerns from defending against cyber threats to adhering to regulatory mandates.
It represents a proactive strategy aimed at safeguarding your data assets across your IT infrastructure, ensuring security, accessibility and compliance.
Data posture is a driving force in the data security lifecycle. By discovering and classifying your data, you’re inherently building a foundation from which to prioritize, control and monitor that data. In its essence, that’s a strong data posture.
How does a DSPM solution help?
DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) takes a holistic approach to managing and safeguarding data assets where an organization hosts them. It’s a proactive technology, ensuring the robust protection of sensitive data against a spectrum of threats, ranging from unauthorized access to potential breaches.
DSPM scans cloud and on-premises environments, along with endpoints, providing risk assessments and remediation controls to protect the organization’s data. Some organizations may benefit from a Data Risk Assessment (DRA), which provides preliminary findings about data and the associated potential risks. In many cases, DRAs provide insights into the organization's data vulnerability.
Key DSPM Capabilities
Data is the lifeblood of businesses and governments. From sensitive customer information to proprietary business secrets, protecting data is crucial for maintaining trust and integrity. Effective implementation of DSPM can drastically improve an enterprise’s data posture.
Key DSPM capabilities include:
- Discovery and Classification
The heart of DSPM is its ability to discover and classify sensitive data across multiple environments (cloud, on-premises and endpoint) with lightning-fast speed. This provides organizations with a granular understanding of their digital estate, enabling them to prioritize protective measures according to their specific business requirements.
Forcepoint DSPM leverages the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to augment its discovery and classification processes with improved efficiency and accuracy. AI can discern patterns, recognize anomalies, and distinguish between valuable assets and redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) types of data.
Furthermore, the DSPM AI model can be trained to discover and classify assets based on specific customer requirements. For example, DSPM with AI can be trained to differentiate between PII files, like those containing social security numbers, and inventory items with SKUs formatted similarly, ensuring sensitive data is properly protected.
- Risk Assessment and Prioritization
Once DSPM scans and classifies the data, it evaluates the security risks and prioritizes them based on their potential impact. It identifies vulnerabilities, improper permissions, and other security gaps, allowing organizations to focus on mitigating the most critical risks first. This proactive approach helps prevent breaches and minimize their impact on business operations.
- Automated Workflow Orchestration
During the DSPM implementation process, workflow orchestration is critical in aligning key stakeholders throughout the organization. During this process, configuration is done according to specific industry requirements, compliance settings are created within regulatory frameworks, and key stakeholders are identified to help define data sensitivity, determining who should have access and the level of access. For example, a VP of Marketing can recommend that Product Marketers have access to confidential roadmap information but restrict editing and sharing rights.
- Automated Remediation
Automated remediation enforces security policies, adjusts access control, and quarantines suspicious data in real-time. This proactive approach reduces the burden on IT and security teams and ensures timely responses to security incidents, minimizing downtime and data exposure.
Data posture will only grow more important as data becomes more dispersed across the organization. DSPM is a critical tool in combatting this sprawl, providing organizations a strong proactive defense against data breaches. By embracing DSPM, organizations can instill a data-first security culture, fostering reliance, trust, and regulatory compliance.
For a deep dive into Forcepoint DSPM visit our product page, or watch this short demo video:
