Data security posture management (DSPM) “provides a systematic approach to identifying where sensitive data is stored, assessing its security, and protecting against unauthorized access.” Data is a high-value target for cybercriminals. DSPM reduces the organizational complexity of preventing and mitigating data breaches while helping you maintain compliance with security regulations.
If your organization stores data in cloud environments, you need proactive data security solutions in key scenarios. In this article, we’ll explore seven of these key DSPM use cases. Then, we’ll look at how CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security can help organizations integrate data protection solutions across multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
What are some common DSPM use cases?
1. Data discovery and classification
3. Compliance support and auditing
4. Risk assessment and reduction
2024 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report
The 2024 Global Threat Report unveils an alarming rise in covert activity and a cyber threat landscape dominated by stealth. Data theft, cloud breaches, and malware-free attacks are on the rise. Read about how adversaries continue to adapt despite advancements in detection technology.
Download NowUse case 1: Data discovery and classification
Organizations need a comprehensive understanding of their data to protect it. However, identifying and categorizing data across the system without a data classification tool can prove challenging. DSPM solutions scan and classify data according to sensitivity levels (such as public, internal, confidential, or restricted). For example, a user's full name will generally receive a confidential classification, whereas credit card information should be classified as restricted.
The classification also considers regulatory requirements such as the GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. For example, all personally identifiable information (PII) data falls under the GDPR, and protected health information (PHI) falls under HIPAA regulatory requirements. This classification provides a clear view of where sensitive data resides, helping organizations maintain compliance with regulatory audits. Unstructured data also needs to be classified, and one approach leans on large language models (LLMs) to address this challenge.
Most DSPM solutions perform data classification on known datastores, leaving open the possibility of shadow data that is left unnoticed and unclassified. A comprehensive DSPM solution has runtime capabilities to discover and classify cloud data in motion.
By reviewing how their data is classified, organizations can implement effective security measures for highly sensitive data, such as enforcing security controls, encryption, and access management. In case of security breaches or incidents, security teams can prioritize impacted data based on classification.
Use case 2: Data flow mapping
Effective data flow mapping analyzes payload data — not log data — to visualize how that data moves, interacts, and resides within a system.
DSPM tools utilize data flow mapping to detect abnormal data movement or access patterns in real time. There are several ways to do this, though payload analysis is considered the best. These anomalous behaviors may indicate the presence of a threat. A DSPM solution with data flow mapping provides real-time alerts and actionable insights so organizations can mitigate these threats swiftly.
Use case 3: Compliance support and auditing
Data protection regulations mandate specific practices for how organizations handle and protect data, thereby safeguarding their users’ privacy and security. Despite the complexities of these ever-evolving regulations, organizations are responsible for tracking and implementing all applicable policies and compliance procedures. If they’re found to be in violation, organizations can face costly fines, penalties, and legal disputes.
DSPM tools provide valuable real-time visibility and continuous monitoring of your organization's data activity to detect and mitigate noncompliance and anomalies. These tools simplify the compliance process by providing automated auditing capabilities, generating audit reports, and documenting data handling practices.
Use case 4: Risk assessment and reduction
A risk assessment involves systematically evaluating environmental risks and proactively mitigating vulnerabilities. Organizations must constantly scan their complex and dynamic cloud environments to identify security vulnerabilities.
DSPM tools help organizations perform risk assessments by continuously scanning different data sources — such as cloud storage, databases, and applications — to identify potential vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or unauthorized access. In addition, a robust DSPM solution tracks data flows at runtime to provide complete coverage of potential data risks in real time.
Organizations can use this assessment to reduce the attack surface for their data, proactively preventing potential data breaches.
Use case 5: Risk prioritization and alert fatigue reduction
For some organizations, continuous monitoring and scanning may yield an overwhelming number of security risks and alerts. Organizations often need additional resources to handle this. For example, if some applications in your system depend on third-party dependencies from Apache Maven or npm, you might be flooded with security alerts, some with low priority and others with critical priority. Indiscriminate alerting contributes to alert fatigue, making critical issues go unnoticed.
DSPM runtime capabilities provide visibility into real-time data flows and offer additional data context to filter out noise. This allows security and DevOps teams to highlight the most critical risks, reducing alert fatigue and helping you prioritize which risks to address immediately.
Use case 6: Data access governance
Preventing unauthorized or accidental access to sensitive data is critical for any organization. Data governance policies apply the principle of least privilege to safeguard sensitive information.
DSPM tools provide capabilities for enforcing fine-grained access control and play a valuable role in implementing data access governance. They enforce the Zero Trust Data Protection (ZTDP) cybersecurity model, a framework to verify any entity trying to access data. These tools also monitor data access patterns to detect real-time anomalies and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
Use case 7: Data leak and data breach prevention
To minimize the impact of data breaches, timely identification of a possible attack is vital. Data breaches and other security incidents can lead to grave consequences, such as financial losses or reputational damage. Maintaining data integrity demands an effective incident detection and response strategy that reports real-time issues.
DSPM solutions that offer runtime protection enforce data policies based on actual, real-time data transfers. This is vital for preventing data leaks and breaches. By analyzing and classifying payload data while it is in motion, DSPM helps you watch and protect data in flight. Coupled with anomaly detection, runtime-powered policies can instantly flag anomalous flow patterns as they occur.
With these capabilities from DSPM tools, organizations enjoy faster incident detection and reduced mean time to respond (MTTR).
Turning to CrowdStrike as your cloud data protection solution
DSPM is a critical component in your overall cloud security. It provides a comprehensive framework for classifying, analyzing, and protecting data across multiple use cases in dynamic cloud environments. Additionally, it provides compliance and risk assessment tools, incident response, and data governance, helping organizations maintain a robust security posture.
CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security distinguishes itself by incorporating DSPM as an integral part of its cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). This integration is key to CrowdStrike's Unified Security Posture Management (USPM) approach, which combines DSPM with cloud infrastructure, applications, identity, and AI data streams. USPM provides security teams with unparalleled contextual intelligence, enabling more accurate risk assessment and prioritization while reducing alert fatigue. This holistic approach creates one of the best security postures in the industry, empowering organizations to gain a comprehensive view of their cloud environment and respond to potential threats with greater speed and precision.
2024 Threat Hunting Report
In the 2024 Threat Hunting Report, CrowdStrike unveils the latest tactics of 245+ modern adversaries and shows how these adversaries continue to evolve and emulate legitimate user behavior. Get insights to help stop breaches here.
Download Now
Dana Raveh is a Director of Product Marketing for Data and Cloud Security at CrowdStrike. Before joining CrowdStrike, Dana led marketing teams in cybersecurity startups, including Seemplicity Security and Flow Security (acquired by Crowdstrike), where she served as the VP of marketing. Dana also had various product management and product marketing roles in a number of global organizations, such as Checkmarx. She holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London.
