Building a strong data security posture is harder than ever. The days when security teams could focus on protecting on-premises and perimeters are long gone – modern IT environments are a tangled web of clouds, devices, and networks. The problem is so bad that not only do many security teams struggle to secure their data, but they don’t even know where a lot of it is.
So, how can organizations build a strong data security posture in the era of fragmented, diverse IT environments? What steps do they need to take? And what tools are available to help?
DSPM: The Answer to Data Posture Woes
Contents
Bolstering data security postures in today’s landscape relies on finding, classifying, and ultimately securing data and data repositories across diverse environments. Carrying out these tasks manually is an enormous burden for security teams and can result in alert fatigue and missed threats. This is where data security posture management (DSPM) comes in.
DSPM solutions are security platforms that constantly monitor and identify data to evaluate its security posture and sniff out vulnerabilities. They help security teams use their often-limited resources effectively and make informed decisions about security actions. They’re effective because they grant organizations total visibility over their entire environment, including cloud data repositories, multi-cloud environments, and IaaS platforms.
The key capabilities of DSPM solutions, which we’ll cover shortly, are a comprehensive guide to building a strong data security posture. So, let’s look at how organizations can leverage these capabilities to shore up their data posture.
Step One: Discovering Data
With sensitive data strewn across complex IT environments, discovering that data is the most important step in bolstering an organization’s security posture. DSPM solutions automatically identify and catalog all data assets across an organization’s entire infrastructure. This process is crucial to improve data security postures as it is impossible to secure data you are not aware of adequately.
Step Two: Classifying Data
With all your data discovered, it’s time to classify it. Classifying data according to sensitivity and compliance requirements – as DSPM tools do – helps security teams understand what data is most critical and needs more advanced protections. Essentially, classifying data helps inform resource allocation and data protection efforts.
Step Three: Assessing Risk and Prioritizing Data Assets
Security teams then need to scan for security risks and vulnerabilities. Most DSPM solutions will include AI/ML, risk correlation, and threat intelligence capabilities to help achieve this. Identifying vulnerabilities helps determine what assets are most at risk, which further informs remediation and protection priorities when combined with data classification efforts.
Step Four: Managing Security Configurations and Policies
Although DSPM tools primarily focus on finding and securing data, they are also useful for ensuring that data security configurations and policies align with pre-established best practices and regulatory requirements. This step is important because misconfigured, weak access controls, and unenforced or inconsistent security policies can result in lost or exposed data.
Step Five: Remediating and Preventing Issues
DSPM tools provide security teams with reports and dashboards that offer unparalleled insight into an organization’s security posture. Security teams must use these insights, which include classifications of data risks based on their potential impact, to inform their wider data security strategy. DSPM tools even offer actionable advice for remediating issues, root cause analysis for incident response and evaluation, and continuous updating and monitoring of security measures for round-the-clock, indefinite protection.
Step Six: Integrating with Other Solutions
That said, DSPM solutions alone may not be adequate for some organizations. Fortunately, these tools are easily integrated with other solutions to provide more comprehensive protection for those businesses that need it.
For example, DSPM tools work alongside data loss prevention (DLP) solutions. These two tools complement each other because DSPM provides the foundational visibility and understanding of data assets necessary for effective data protection, while DLP offers enforcement mechanisms to prevent data exfiltration and misuse.
Similarly, data detection and response (DDR) complements DSPM solutions by detecting and responding to threats in an organization’s environment. Using these solutions together ensures that data is both visible and protected from threats.
Insider risk management (IRM) tools are also a good pairing for DSPM. These solutions detect, assess, and mitigate the risks brought about by insider threats to prevent data exposure. Alongside DSPM, they provide a holistic approach to cloud data security.
Conclusion
So, there you have it—a comprehensive guide to building a strong data security posture. Purchase a DSPM solution, follow these steps, and, hey presto, you’ll have a robust data security posture. What are you waiting for?