Data protection is big business—really big business. Recent research by Fortune Business Insights values the 2024 global data protection market at $150.38 billion, up from $131.82 billion in 2023. And the market’s growth shows no sign of slowing down: that same research projects it will grow to an eye-watering $505.98 billion by 2032.
The market’s extraordinary dynamism is partly responsible for this growth. New data protection challenges, solutions, and products appear with staggering frequency, pushing spending higher and higher as the years go by. And although the market is undoubtedly saturated with data protection solutions, every now and again, a market-defining product will come along. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is the most recent of those solutions.
What is Data Security Posture Management?
DSPM solutions offer visibility into where sensitive data resides, who has access to it, how it has been used, and what the security posture of the data repository is by assessing the state of data security, identifying and classifying risks, and implementing security controls. These solutions, typically used by IT departments, security and compliance teams, and executive leadership, help secure increasingly complex IT environments.
Why is Data Security Posture Management Important?
DSPM is a market-defining solution because it addresses the primary data protection challenge of the era: sprawling, complex cloud environments. Cloud adoption is higher than ever and shows no sign of slowing down. In 2022, 60% of corporate data was stored in the cloud, up 100% from just seven years earlier.
Cloud service providers (CSPs) have offered all types of organizations tremendous productivity, financial, and sustainability benefits. However, they also have vastly complicated data protection. The crux of the issue is that the growing number of repositories and pipelines required to store data across multiple CSPs means that data can end up in places not linked to business operations, leaving security teams in the dark about much of their sensitive data and data repositories – these unknown entities are called shadow data – and, of course, you can’t protect what you can’t see.
DSPM solutions help organizations uncover shadow data and mitigate threats to data in increasingly complex cloud environments. They map data flows and pipelines to assess and mitigate data exposure and misconfiguration risks, offer visibility into data residency and access controls to streamline compliance processes, and automate data discovery, classification, and risk assessment processes to reduce the burden on overstretched security teams. Moreover, they integrate easily with existing security tools to offer unified data protection across the entire IT infrastructure.
Data Security Posture Management: Gartner’s View
In the years to come, DSPM will play an increasingly important role in data protection. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 20% of businesses will prioritize DSPM technologies and use them to discover and secure their data repositories, both known and unknown.
Moreover, Gartner’s interest in DSPM has grown enormously in the past few years. In the 2022 Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security, Gartner stated that DSPM had a market penetration of less than one percent. However, the 2023 Innovation Insight report projects that it will increase to 20% over the next few years.
Gartner’s most recent DSPM report, Voice of the Customer for Data Security Posture Management, tells a similar story. This report synthesizes peer reviews from Gartner’s Peer Insights service, offering potential buyers insight into the efficacy of the leading DSPM solutions. It shows that, despite the market’s infancy, DSPM providers offer remarkably mature services.
Industry leaders Cyera, Symmetry Systems, Securti, Varonis, Palo Alto Networks (Dig Security), Rubrik (Laminar), and OneTrust all achieve 80% or more in the willingness to recommend category and four or more stars in the product capabilities, sales experience, deployment experience, and support experience categories. The takeaway here is that, by all indicators, the DSPM is here to stay and is only set to mature further.
Conclusion
DSPM is fast becoming an essential component of data protection strategies. As cloud adoption grows and data regulations tighten, DSPM solutions will provide a much-needed layer of visibility, control, and automation to secure complex data environments. For organizations aiming to stay ahead of the curve, adopting DSPM could be a critical step toward building a resilient, future-proof data protection strategy.
