Why Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is Critical for Enterprises

Data security has never been more important for enterprises than today. As enterprise teams continue to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) at work, the anticipation builds over Apple’s New AI iPhone, and the EU AI Act takes form, the complexity, and necessity, of managing data security across diverse environments has escalated. Data is truly top of mind for every single security leader. And not just because it’s a massively growing attack surface, but because it's the lifeblood of the organization - the fuel behind its ability to enter new markets, increase the competitive moat through accelerating innovation, and better understand their customers.

For years security teams have adopted identity, data backup and recovery, endpoint security, cloud security posture management, security information and event management, data leakage prevention, and security service edge solutions - to help increase their ability to protect the business. If you’re reading this, you have most likely adopted one of these solutions before, built one as a vendor, or developed industry research to support the adoption of one of these solutions. But even with all of these technologies designed for zero trust access, security insights, and recovery from an attack, security has been viewed as a speed bump to business innovation. Not the triumphant win you were expecting, right? This is because it’s never been simple to map security’s value back to the business value, and because 70% of organizations still struggle to safely use its most important asset: data. 

Why is that? Well, because despite the billions of dollars of security investment over the years, there’s been a lack of technologies to actually discover, classify, and determine the data security posture within the enterprise across SaaS, public cloud, data warehouses, and on-premises enterprise environments. That is, until the emergence of data security posture management (DSPM). A newer technology within the security market, about 19% of large enterprises today have already begun to adopt DSPM. 

New research unveiled today within the 2024 Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Adoption Report, which was the culmination of responses from 637 security and IT pros, shows that a staggering 75% of organizations plan to implement DSPM within the next 12 months. This is a faster rate of adoption that any of the technologies listed above.

This rapid adoption rate underscores the importance of DSPM in safeguarding data, the fastest growing attack surface for enterprises.

Why DSPM is outpacing other security solutions

Lamont Orange, CISO at Cyera, said it well: “Organizations today are under relentless pressure to extract maximum value from their data while driving critical business initiatives. As a result, the demand for DSPM solutions is skyrocketing. These tools are becoming essential for comprehensive data discovery, classification, and posture, enabling businesses to protect their most sensitive data and use it to derive additional business value.”

The new report that Cyera helped bring to life reveals that the adoption of DSPM is outpacing other well-known security technologies, such as Security Service Edge (SSE), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). But why is DSPM gaining traction so quickly?

The answer lies in the fundamental role data plays in today’s enterprise environment, and the critical role DSPM plays in shining light on it. Similar to how Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and AMD GPUs provide the underlying infrastructure for AI development, data forms the foundation of AI systems. Therefore making AI dependent on data. This data dependency has been the wave accelerating the push foe Chief Information Security Officers to reevaluate their overall data security strategies, and seek solutions like DSPM to not only protect sensitive information across SaaS, IaaS, DBaaS, and on-premises environments - but to actually help make data safely accessible to the business.

DSPM offers an integrated, modern solution, that enables businesses to maintain strong security postures while capitalizing on the potential of AI and other digital advancements. 

For example, more than 60% of organizations admitted they lacked confidence in their ability to detect and respond to data security and privacy exposures. AI exacerbates this gap given that CISOs not only have humans to be concerned about, but also non-human identities (NHI) as well.  Now, Copilots like Microsoft Copilot, often have access to sensitive data - given the way they were designed. Another common AI use case is centered around the fact that sensitive data could be unknowingly, drifting into large language models (LLM) that the enterprise is training for their own customer use. This could trigger compliance issues.

This lack of confidence highlights the need for the enhanced monitoring and automated response capabilities - aka posture - that DSPM platforms provide. Given that DSPM has the ability to not only improve alignment between detection tools and data security tools - but IS the tool, DSPM empowers organizations to protect sensitive data, remain agile in the mindset of an ever-changing data security landscape, and make data available to key data stakeholders within the business.

Think of DSPM as the sum of three capabilities. Discovery + Classification + Posture = DSPM.

‍Visibility gaps and fragmented tools are weakening security postures

One of the most alarming findings in Cyera’s report is that 83% of respondents believe a lack of visibility into their data is weakening their security posture. Without real-time and comprehensive insight into where sensitive data resides, organizations are left vulnerable. Traditional data discovery and classification tools often fall short, as confirmed by 87% of enterprises that found their current solutions fairly inadequate. Only 13% of respondents considered their existing systems very effective.

This visibility gap creates security blind spots that expose critical business data to potential threats. Fragmented tools and outdated classification methods (i.e. slow and manual processes, disconnected from discovery tools, pattern/RegEx only etc.) exacerbate these vulnerabilities. 

Again, prompting the growing excitement around DSPM to fill these gaps and provide real-time monitoring, precise data discovery, and automated classification.

‍DSPM features: What your peers are prioritizing

While the excitement around DSPM is clear, you might be wondering what your peers view as the most critical DSPM features to consider. Here are the three key features your peers are focusing on when implementing a DSPM solution:

• Real-Time Data Monitoring (43%) ensures businesses have the visibility needed to track sensitive data in real-time, reducing the risk of exposures.
• Data Discovery (38%) plays a crucial role in uncovering unknown data assets, ensuring no sensitive information is overlooked.
• Data Classification (35%) enables accurate categorization of data to ensure appropriate security measures are applied based on the data’s sensitivity.

The findings from the 2024 DSPM Adoption Report reflect a shifting security landscape where data is the new frontier for cyber threats. Thus, data is the new center of gravity of security, overall.  As enterprises continue to face growing challenges in protecting, complying, responding and ultimately leveraging sensitive data, the demand for DSPM solutions will continue to rise. By offering comprehensive data discovery, real-time monitoring, and automated classification, DSPM provides the necessary foundation for securing data across diverse enterprise environments.

DSPM will play a pivotal role in enabling organizations to maximize the value of their data while maintaining strong security postures - both during this age of AI, and into the future. For CISOs and security teams, adopting DSPM is no longer an option—it’s a necessity in today’s rapidly evolving digital world. It’s also your key to winning the hearts and minds of the business. 

Cue that triumphant music.

Cyera is here for you when you are ready to make that first step.