Overview of DSPM in Skyhigh SSE

What is DSPM?

DSPM is a comprehensive approach to managing and securing an organization’s data assets. It involves gaining visibility into data, assessing its security posture, and implementing measures to protect it from threats. By automating data security workflows, DSPM enables organizations to proactively identify and mitigate risks, ensuring that data is always protected.

Objective of DSPM

The primary objective of DSPM is to assist security teams in proactively identifying, reducing, and remediating cloud data security risks through the analysis of sensitive data. The outcomes of this analysis include:

Data Visibility. Gain insights into where sensitive data resides and how it is used.
Implement Access Control. Establish and enforce policies to control who can access sensitive data.
Monitor Data Flow. Track how data moves within the cloud environment to detect any anomalies.
Identify Infrastructure Vulnerabilities, Errors, and Misconfigurations. Detect weaknesses and misconfigurations in the cloud infrastructure that could lead to security risks.

The additional key functions of DSPM are:

Securing sensitive data from unauthorized access across multi-cloud, hybrid environments, and unmanaged data repositories.
Helping organizations adhere to data privacy regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.
Factors driving DSPM adoption include: shadow data, diverse data formats, growing regulatory demands, and vulnerabilities within cloud environments.

To attain the goals of DSPM in Skyhigh SSE, see Achieve the Objective of DSPM in Skyhigh SSE.

Importance of DSPM with Critical Use Cases

The critical use cases that DSPM can address highlight its significance.

Data Discovery and Classification. DSPM solutions continuously scan data across environments to create a comprehensive inventory, tagging and classifying data based on sensitivity, risk level, and compliance requirements. This visibility ensures that organizations know precisely what data they hold and where it resides.
Access Governance. DSPM helps organizations enforce least-privilege access and ensures compliance with data protection regulations by analyzing permissions and monitoring access to sensitive data.
Risk Analysis and Security Posture Assessment. DSPM continuously evaluates security posture and provides real-time insight into risks by analyzing data vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and access anomalies. This allows organizations to prioritize and address vulnerabilities as they emerge.
Automated Remediation and Policy Enforcement. DSPM solutions use automated policy enforcement to quickly fix security and compliance issues by adjusting access controls or encrypting sensitive data. The automated workflows ensure that risks are addressed efficiently without constant manual oversight.

Traditional DLP vs DSPM

This table summarizes the key differences between Traditional DLP and DSPM, emphasizing their distinct approaches to data security.

Key Aspects	Traditional DLP	DSPM
Primary Focus	Prevents data exfiltration	Comprehensive visibility and data security
Approach	Reactive, based on predefined policies	Proactive, continuous monitoring and assessment
Data Movement Monitoring	Monitors and controls data movement across endpoints, networks, cloud applications, and emails	Provides visibility into data usage across multi-cloud and on-prem environments
Policy Enforcement	Enforces predefined rules to block unauthorized data transfers	Identifies misconfigurations and security gaps without relying solely on predefined rules
Risk Management	Operates based on known risks with limited scope	Identifies compliance risks and security gaps comprehensively
Administrative Effort	Requires significant administrative effort to classify data and manage policies	Automates visibility and risk identification, reducing administrative effort
Remediation Actions	Limited to blocking data transfers after a risk is identified	Enable organizations to take corrective actions to ensure better compliance and mitigation against data breaches
Visibility	Limited to data movement and policy compliance	Deep visibility into data location, access, and usage

Enhanced Data Protection with SSE and DSPM

DSPM and SSE form a powerful combination for a data protection framework. DSPM focuses on identifying and evaluating data risks, while SSE serves as the enforcement layer that prevents misuse of sensitive data, enforces policies, and enables secure access. The synergy between DSPM and SSE creates a robust security framework that goes beyond basic monitoring to provide comprehensive data protection and risk management.

Benefits of SSE Integration with DSPM

Integrating SSE with DSPM provides several key benefits:

Comprehensive Protection. Provides end-to-end protection for sensitive data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Enhanced Security Controls. Use DSPM insights into actionable security controls to protect sensitive data by utilizing SSE capabilities such as SWG, CASB, ZTNA, CSPM, UEBA, and risk-based monitoring. It ensures that data remains protected regardless of its location or access method.
Regulatory Compliance. Maintains compliance while adapting to evolving security threats.

Role of SSE to Enhance DSPM Outcomes

SSE integrates SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and other advanced security features, and acts as the enforcement engine that strengthens DSPM outcomes by providing:

Data Visibility and Protection across All Channels. SSE ensures that sensitive data is continuously monitored and protected whether it resides in SaaS, IaaS, endpoints, or private applications. CASB and SWG deliver inline security controls to prevent unauthorized data exposure, while on-demand scanning detects risks in cloud storage and collaboration tools.
Proactive Risk Mitigation with User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). DSPM identifies potential data exposure risks, but UEBA in SSE takes it a step further by detecting anomalies in user behavior to pinpoint which data assets may be at risk. This enables users to know the specific areas of their enterprise data that are vulnerable due to detected user actions. Furthermore, combining the Shadow IT registry with the service risk posture to assess risks related to data. As a result, data risk is evaluated based on both user risk and service risk. UEBA plays a crucial role in assessing user risk, which is subsequently utilized to determine data risk. If a user suddenly downloads an unusually large volume of sensitive data or access-restricted files, risk-based policies can trigger alerts or automated responses.
Continuous Compliance and Security Posture Management (CSPM). DSPM relies on CSPM to monitor cloud misconfigurations and policy violations, ensuring that sensitive data is not left exposed due to improper access controls or misconfigured storage buckets. SSE helps enforce remediation measures in real time, ensuring continuous compliance with regulatory frameworks.
Zero Trust Access Controls with ZTNA. ZTNA ensures access to critical data is granted based on identity, device posture, and contextual risk. DSPM helps identify overexposed data, while ZTNA enforces least-privilege access, reducing the risk of unauthorized access or insider threats.
Activity Monitoring & Data Risk Profiling. DSPM’s effectiveness is enhanced with continuous activity monitoring and user risk profiling from SSE. By correlating data access patterns, application usage, and user risk scores, organizations gain a holistic view of security posture and can enforce adaptive policies to prevent potential data breaches.