Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is a secret weapon when it comes to passing audits with flying colors. The point of a data security audit is to ensure that any sensitive data an organization has is kept safe. Usually, this means checking the areas in which it is stored and ensuring that those doors are locked. However, a lot of data can accidentally fall outside of the realm of those predefined areas for a large number of reasons.
As succinctly stated by Gartner,“Data security posture management (DSPM) provides visibility as to where sensitive data is, who has access to that data, how it has been used, and what the security posture of the data stored or application is.”
This gives DSPM a unique ability to finddata – wherever it hides – and makes sure that when an audit comes, organizations can account for all of it.
To Pass a Data Security Audit…
Data security audits are required by nearly every privacy compliance framework (or how else would regulatory bodies know who is following guidelines or not). This includes:
- HIPAA
- ISO 27001
- GDPR
- SOC 2
- SOX
- FedRAMP (CSPs)
- Cyber Essentials (UK)
And more. In many of the frameworks, the verbiage is something like, “Requires companies to undergo security audits that assess cybersecurity and backups of relevant data” (SOX) or “Security audits are a crucial part of GDPR compliance, and should be conducted regularly for data collection, storage, usage, and sharing,” (obviously GDPR).
When these audits occur, what do they look for? Internal controls that reflect that the data protected under those laws is safe in the architecture, systems, flows, and environments provided. This is all fine and good, but even if those entities are secure, there are still ways an audit can go wrong.
Hidden data can undermine good security in an audit.
The fact that all internal processes and systems are secured is good (or else how could any company even hope to pass a data security audit today?);however, there is still room for error. Even with those entities being secured (as per the standards), loose instances of data floating around could still be caught and show auditors that the organization still has work to do. For example, you’ve invested in API protection that ensures your customer data flowing from various apps into your cloud databases is PCI DSS compliant – but you have a myriad of shadow APIs caught during the pen testing portion of an audit. Some of those APIs can still make calls to sensitive data, but they were never secured and were never removed or found until now.
The same can be said of any stale access to data stores. As noted by TechTarget “Locating and deleting or moving stale data or duplicate data is important. DSPM can help enterprises move stale data to cold – and cost-effective – storage.”
The next worst thing to having data leaks discovered by an attacker is having them found by an auditor. Since all relevant data must be protected, it must first be found, classified, and assigned a proper level of security (or storage)to be audit-ready. In complex, cloud-based environments where this task can be the most daunting, DSPM can help.
DSPM: Protecting data in those hard-to-see places
Data security firm Cyberhaven notes that “DSPM is particularly effective in securing sensitive information across a multitude of data stores, including cloud data repositories, multi-cloud environments (such as AWS and Microsoft Azure environments), and IaaS platforms – anywhere data is stored, processed, and accessed by a diverse workforce.”There are a few central features of Data Security Posture Management that make it so adept at finding lost data, APIs, IT, IoT, and anything in those places.
Those include its ability to:
- Discover Data: DSPM leverages automation, AI, and machine learning to scope out all data (and shadow data) instances across any environment: cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid, remote, and on-premises.
- Classify Data: Next, DSPM uses that same artificial intelligence, fine-tuned with Large Language Models (LLMs), to assign classifications to each data subset in preparation for the custom security controls that are to follow.
- Prioritize Data Risk: At this point, DSPM utilizes techniques such as vulnerability scanning and risk correlation to identify which assets are at the highest or most imminent risk of danger. This alerts the organization so that resources can be diverted to where they are needed the most (and saved from being wasted elsewhere).
- Provide Data Transparency: DSPM tools provide teams with data lineage or mapping of where each of their discovered assets has been, tracking its journey from inception to destination. This means that when an audit comes calling for information on the location of a certain type of protected data, you’ll know where it is.
- Enforce Data Security Policies: DSPM’s ability to automatically enforce data security policies means you’ll know that your data is safe, more than just where it is.
As your data moves through your environment, there are multitudes of ways in which it could not be safe, even if it started out that way. It can be accessed by an authorized user and then accidentally saved to an unprotected server. It could be copied and pasted from an internal memo and placed on a PowerPoint that left the network. It could find its way out of the CRM and into a report that is saved in a cloud repository thatall users can access instead of just those with the appropriate permissions, and so on.
While these actions can’t be stopped (unless you can get every employee to learn and follow compliance-ready requirements for each framework you’re beholden to), they can be spotted, mapped, discovered, protected, and even stopped by a Data Security Posture Management solution.
The DSPM Difference
Because of its ability to analyze the flow of sensitive data, DSPM is uniquely positioned to identify areas of weakness or lack of encryption, discover potential vulnerabilities and risks, and prepare teams for audits that will surely be looking for the same things.
Whether or not your environment is ready for an audit now, it can be with the help of DSPM.
