Top 5 Real-World DSPM Use Cases

In this cloud-driven era, sensitive information is constantly being created, transmitted, and stored. Organizations worldwide thrive on that data and, at the same time, face unprecedented challenges in protecting it. Data security posture management (DSPM) has emerged as a game-changing way for organizations to manage and secure their sensitive data proactively.

By continuously monitoring and assessing their data security posture, organizations can gain deep insights into their data landscape, identify potential vulnerabilities, and effectively prioritize risks. In this way, they can stay ahead of potential threats, preventing data breaches and protecting their reputations.

Five ways DSPM is used in the real world

So, how can data security teams ‌leverage DSPM to take their data security to the next level? How can they quickly and efficiently build business value from a DSPM solution? Let's take a closer look at these questions.

In this blog post, we will discuss the top five real-world DSPM use cases that demonstrate its essential role in modern data protection.

Use case 1: Effectively manage the explosion of data in complex cloud environments

Challenge: Organizations continue to expand their multicloud footprints as they migrate vast volumes of data to the cloud. An estimated 90% of organizations store data in multicloud environments, and 175 zettabytes of data are expected to migrate to the cloud by 2025. This shift has scattered business-critical data across various cloud platforms outside the security team's control. As such, teams struggle to understand which data is in the cloud—and where—across multiple platforms, accounts, and services.

How DSPM helps: Discover and classify data 

An agentless, AI- and ML-powered DSPM solution can help security teams ‌discover, classify, and inventory data across the entire multicloud estate. It also helps to make a detailed map and inventory of data assets. With this, security teams can find sensitive data and understand who has access to it, how it is being used, and its associated risks.

In its 2023 Innovation Insight: Data Security Posture Management report, Gartner states: “DSPM technologies can discover unknown data and categorize structured and unstructured data across cloud service platforms. Security and risk management leaders can also use them to identify security and privacy risks as data spreads through pipelines and across geographic boundaries.”

Figure 1: DSPM data discovery and classification

Use case 2: Reduce data access risk and enforce least-privileged access controls

Challenge: Adopting modern multicloud environments and services often leads to default data access, movement, duplication, privileged access, and entitlements. Data security teams often lose visibility and control over who can access what data, increasing the risk of data breaches and compliance issues. Last year, 80% of organizations ‌suffered identity-related breaches.

How DSPM helps: Precise data access management

Preventing data leaks and unauthorized access requires insights into data type, users, roles, access entitlements, locations, and activity. Using these insights, security teams can fortify access to their sensitive data.

DSPM solutions can manage and analyze data access permissions in real time, providing insight into who has access to what data, as well as whether such access is necessary and compliant with the principle of least privilege. This helps security teams harden access permissions and policies, limiting access to only authorized users with a specific need to access that data.

Figure 2: DSPM data access path analysis

Use Case 3: Prevent data breaches, exposure, and loss

Challenge: Cloud services and configurations change frequently, which can lead to data exposure. It is crucial to proactively monitor, assess, and fix risks associated with new and modified services and configurations before bad actors can exploit them. According to one report, 90% of organizations are concerned about the accidental exposure of their data.

When it comes to detecting, investigating, and responding to targeted attacks or malicious data exfiltration, organizations can’t simply rely on indicators of compromise and alerts to secure data. Security teams need to fully understand who the adversary is, the methods they may use in an attack, and the chances of an attack. Integrated threat intelligence is needed to understand risk, proactively stop threats or malicious activities, and simplify ‌incident response operations.

How DSPM helps: Data risk assessment, prioritization, and remediation

Effective DSPM solutions use advanced AI, ML, and threat correlation functions to aggregate and understand large volumes of siloed data. By transforming this data into meaningful insights, they can help uncover hidden risks or attack vectors that could lead to a compromise or breach. Combined with near-real-time alerts, notifications, and remediation guidance, this helps security teams focus on what matters most and reduce MTTR.

Figure 3: DSPM risk analysis - top risks and risk by category in a cloud environment

Figure 4: DSPM risk analysis

Use case 4: Enforce consistent policies and best practices to avoid compliance violations

Challenge: The regulatory landscape is constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements, changing privacy concerns, and the increasingly interconnected global economy. Organizations need to be both vigilant and adaptable to stay compliant in this ever-shifting regulatory terrain. Failure to do so can result in hefty fines, reputational damage, and even legal consequences. Approximately US$1.94 billion in GDPR noncompliance fines were issued in 2023, roughly a 14% increase over 2022.

Security teams need to monitor data security posture drift against prebuilt policies aligned with best practices, governance structures, and privacy laws. They might also need to customize existing policies or develop new policies to meet the needs of specific organizations. To ensure they meet these requirements, organizations need a robust compliance framework in place.

How DSPM helps: Enforce consistent policies and automate data compliance

With a single DLP engine for an entire data protection solution, DSPM can help organizations create a policy once and apply it everywhere in the organization. This ensures sensitive data is properly tracked and consistently protected, no matter where or how it is accessed. In addition, it reduces the cost and complexity of deploying and maintaining complicated policies.

DSPM also plays a crucial role in ensuring regulatory compliance. It provides the necessary visibility and control to demonstrate compliance with industry standards and regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS. By automatically mapping data security posture to compliance benchmarks and best practices, it helps assess gaps, understand the impact, and remediate violations while reducing manual effort and errors.

Figure 5: Out-of-the-box data security policies

Use case 5: Do more with less

Challenges: According to a report, 89% of organizations expect a significant or moderate increase in data security budgets, driven by the escalating threat landscape and strict regulatory requirements. Despite large investments, many organizations still struggle to address the complexities of securing vast, mission-critical data, ensuring compliance along with strong cross-functional team collaboration to secure data in agile, complex, and diverse cloud environments.

The reason for this is simple enough. Even as they adopt modern cloud offerings, many organizations depend on siloed, traditional tools and techniques to secure their cloud data. These tools, not built for the agility, complexity, and diversity of the cloud, fail to deliver the protection organizations need.

How DSPM helps: Optimize ROI with DSPM

DSPM supports a wide range of cloud platforms and services, including IaaS, PaaS, and DBaaS, to provide comprehensive data security. It easily integrates with existing ITSM, SIEM, and ChatOps tools and platforms to prevent impending attacks and communicate risk, helping both to support remediation efforts and enhance overall security posture without creating silos.

DSPM is an indispensable tool for organizations seeking to safeguard their data assets and maintain compliance. Its comprehensive capabilities, coupled with its ability to automate many data security tasks, make DSPM a valuable investment for organizations of all sizes. With the power of DSPM, organizations can confidently navigate the data security challenges, securing their data and building a robust foundation for growth and success.

Figure 6: DSPM integration and automated notification

Strengthen multicloud data security with Zscaler DSPM

Zscaler DSPM extends best-in-class security for data in the public cloud. It helps organizations ‌locate and identify data, enforce security policies, mitigate risks, and ensure compliance with regulations. It can easily integrate with existing security ecosystems, providing enhanced security without disrupting workflows. 

Figure 7: How Zscaler DSPM works

Interested in learning more about how Zscaler DSPM can strengthen your data security? Contact us today to schedule a demo of our DSPM platform. Let’s work together to keep your cloud data safe and secure.