Joshua Galyon
Data is the world’s most valuable resource—and has been for some time now. Like its predecessors—oil, coal, and electricity, to name just a few—data is the lifeblood of innovation, helping organizations develop and refine exciting new technologies that keep the march of progress plodding along. However, data is, perhaps more than any other historical resource, under threat.
Data is straightforward to steal, especially compared to physical commodities. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to steal oil in any meaningful quantity and get away with it? You couldn’t. Stealing data, however, can be as simple as buying a phishing kit online and sending a few spam emails.
As such, it’s crucial to monitor your data in real-time. It’s no use finding out about data theft after the fact—you need to detect and respond to data threats immediately to prevent exposure. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) tools help achieve this. Here’s how.
Understanding DSPM
First, it’s essential to understand what DSPM is and does.
DSPM solutions grant organizations visibility into where sensitive data resides, who can access it, how it has been used, and how secure the data store or application it resides in is. Primarily used by IT departments, security and compliance teams, and executive leadership, these tools assess an organization’s existing state of data security by identifying and classifying potential risks and vulnerabilities, implementing security controls to mitigate these risks, and monitoring the organization’s security posture to ensure it is robust—all in real-time.
Benefit 1: Early Threat Detection
DSPM’s real-time data monitoring capability identifies and alerts security teams to threats as and when they occur. The earlier a security team is alerted to a danger, the sooner they can respond, and the less damage a threat will likely cause.
These tools continuously analyze data access patterns and usage to flag anomalies that could indicate unauthorized access, insider threats, or malware activity. For example, if a user starts behaving abnormally—such as attempting to access or exfiltrate large quantities of sensitive financial information—the DSPM solution will alert security teams immediately.
Benefit 2: Enhanced Incident Response
Similarly, monitoring data in real-time with DSPM helps inform incident response efforts, providing immediate alerts and actionable insights into potential malicious activities so security teams can respond accordingly.
For example, DSPM tools can alert security teams to an employee accessing sensitive data outside their usual work hours or from an unusual location and suggest corrective actions, such as locking the account or resetting credentials. Because DSPM offers these insights in real-time, security teams can respond before data is compromised.
Benefit 3: Immediate Misconfiguration Remediation
Misconfigurations are a genuine and severe problem in complex modern IT environments. Managing configurations across countless applications, cloud platforms, and on-premises systems is a significant challenge, especially for overstretched security teams. Cloud misconfigurations were a primary driver of a spike in data breaches in 2023. DSPM’s real-time monitoring capability helps overcome this challenge.
For example, an employee is inadvertently granted admin-level access to cloud infrastructure that is unnecessary for their role. DSPM will flag this for the security team so they can restrict their access. Similarly, if a misconfigured permission exposes sensitive data to external data, DSPM can detect and flag this, too.
Benefit 4: Real-Time Compliance Alerts
Aside from being the most valuable, data is also one of the most regulated commodities in the world. Regulations like GDPR, PCI DSS, and the CCPA include strict requirements on how organizations manage and secure sensitive information. However, ensuring compliance with all these regulations – as most organizations must do – can be a significant challenge, especially when data is stored in disparate applications and platforms.
DSPM’s real-time data monitoring capability ensures compliance by continuously tracking data access, usage, and security to ensure it aligns with all relevant regulatory requirements. For example, suppose a healthcare provider accidentally stores sensitive healthcare information in an insecure repository that would allow unauthorized individuals to access it. In that case, the DSPM solution will alert security teams so they can respond and maintain HIPAA compliance.
Benefit 5: Intelligent Risk Prioritization
Not all security alerts carry the same level of urgency. Real-time monitoring tools equipped with advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities—like DSPM—can prioritize risks based on their severity, potential impact, and likelihood. Providing these insights in real-time ensures that security teams can allocate resources effectively and address the most critical risks immediately, thus enhancing the organization’s overall security posture.
Conclusion
Real-time data monitoring is a core capability of Data Security Posture Management tools, allowing security teams to identify and respond to security and compliance issues as and when they occur. As we all know, speed is everything in cybersecurity – real-time monitoring tools recognize this fact. If you have a complex IT environment, DSPM tools and their real-time data monitoring capabilities can transform your security posture, ensuring malicious actors can’t access your valuable data.
