How Does DSPM Make the Protection of Data Across Multiple Cloud Environments Easier?
One of the biggest challenges of securing sensitive data in today’s environments is the presence of multiple clouds, each with its own set of security stipulations.
In one sense, cloud security is hard enough within one cloud. There are the perennial issues of visibility, obscured insider attacks, porous identity and access management (IAM), and a lack of skilled cloud security experts, among many others. Now, consider the fact that cloud service providers (CSPs) only provide one part of the overall cloud security puzzle, and you can see why securing multiple clouds could present an overwhelming problem.
Data security posture management (DSPM) was designed to wrangle data, in any form, from across disparate environments and secure it under a single management head. For this reason, DSPM tools are especially adept at solving these exact challenges inherent to multi-cloud security.
Here’s how it does it.
Table of Contents
DSPM data discovery | The ability to find any type of data, anywhere.
DSPM tools are designed to discover all data assets across an organization’s infrastructure, no matter how or where they are stored. This includes both structured data (searchable files stored in databases) and unstructured data (audio/visual files, for example, stored in data lakes).
DSPM uses AI-based technology to scan multiple cloud locations, looking for and identifying instances of sensitive data. As data security firm Cyberhaven explains, “This process is facilitated by integrations with all cloud service providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and involves scanning diverse cloud data storage locations and data flows to create a comprehensive inventory of data, ensuring that no data is overlooked, especially in complex multi-cloud setups.”
Once the data is assembled and identified, DSPM utilizes machine learning to analyze its content and determine its level of sensitivity. Leveraging AI algorithms, it searches for things like personally identifiable information (PII), healthcare information, financial data, and surrounding context to classify the findings correctly.
DSPM data lineage | Tracking your data across multiple clouds.
It is easy for data to get lost as it travels through the various recesses of the cloud, into and out of cloud storage systems, through CRMs, via SaaS apps, sent through Slack or other messaging channels, attached via email, and more. DSPM provides organizations with data lineage, or the ability to see where their data originated, where it traveled (even through multiple cloud environments), and what it was used for along the way.
Gartner explains that data lineage “shows the movement of data over time and provides context to what happens to data as it goes through diverse systems and processes,” asserting that “data and analytics leaders must use data lineage to augment their metadata management strategy.” Giving your SOC a bird’s eye view of your data helps ensure that it doesn’t fall between the cracks, resulting in shadow data, or slip out of sight as it moves between various cloud services and environments. Information can be slippery in a web of cloud complexity – DSPM’s data lineage feature helps pull the curtain back on where data has been and how it’s been used.
DSPM IAM integration | Simplifying complex access management across multi-cloud environments.
One of the trickiest parts about cloud security, particularly in a multi-cloud setup, is integrity and access management (IAM). Different cloud services have different integration requirements and permission models. The cloud allows for multiple identities (while on-premises, users only have one), compounding the problem even more as you get runaway identity growth and an even harder time tracking what you have.
By integrating with IAM, DSPM solutions can ingest user identity information and combine it with powerful automation and integration capabilities to manage data access permissions across multiple cloud environments, simplifying and streamlining what could otherwise be an overwhelming process.
DSPM Enforcement | Automatically aligning configurations with established policies.
Another challenge in securing cloud environments is the vastness of cloud resources. As stated by TechTarget, “The nature and scale of cloud deployment are such that many security operations and architecture teams just can’t keep up, especially in areas such as investigation and vulnerability analysis, where some degree of manual involvement has traditionally been needed.” They point out that this is mainly due to the fact that “cloud deployments change more often, and cloud infrastructure tends to be much more dynamic than traditional on-premises environments.”
For this reason, many are turning to the kind of automated security policy enforcement that DSPM can provide. DSPM tools not only discover and classify data across muti-cloud environments (and those on-premises, in single cloud environments, or hybrid models) but also apply the relevant security controls to applicable data. A DSPM platform can even perform basic fixes, remediations, and configuration-aligning adjustments without significant human intervention.
Conclusion
Data will only proliferate at an ever-faster rate in the cloud, and what is now complex will only grow more so. With 89% of companies using a multi-cloud approach (and 44% adopting the latest cloud products as soon as they’re available), that eagerness for cloud adeptness needs to transfer over to security as well.
While other solutions such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) or Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) are essential solutions for protecting cloud architecture, the DSPM difference is that it goes after and protects the data itself – no matter which architecture or environment it resides in, and all based on your centralized security policies. As it stands, data security posture management allows teams to target multi-cloud data security in a way unique to any other tool on the market today.
An ardent believer in personal data privacy and the technology behind it, Katrina Thompson is a freelance writer leaning into encryption, data privacy legislation, and the intersection of information technology and human rights. She has written for Bora, Venafi, Tripwire, and many other sites.