Cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations store, process and share data. But with this transformation come new security risks. With massive cloud migration and more SaaS-based services popping up everywhere in the enterprise, it becomes even more critical to ensure these environments are protected — especially with so much unstructured data.
The rise of unstructured data is complicating matters further, as employees are accessing SaaS applications from various locations and devices using both corporate and personal accounts, sharing data regularly. Keeping track of where this data resides and who has access to it has become increasingly challenging.
It is not uncommon for organizations to have 30 versions of a contract stored across five separate data repositories located across 15 different locations.
This is why Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) became so popular. CSPM was a relatively new approach to cloud security, but over the last year or so, it has been overshadowed by Data Security Posture Management (DSPM).
This article will explore the key differences between CSPM and DSPM and explain why DSPM is the more prominent solution today.
The need for DSPM and CSPM
Today, enterprises struggle with three key data challenges:
- Data growth is exponential
- Massive data migration to the Cloud
- Diverse types of data (such as financial, intellectual, and business confidential data, and regulated PCI/PHI data) are being used in increasingly complex environments
As cloud computing becomes the norm in many organizations, traditional security solutions designed for on-premise systems may not be sufficient in cloud environments.
A quick look at some recent statistics paints a clear picture of why CSPM and DSPM are so important:
Data breaches: According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million USD.
Cloud misconfigurations: Way back in 2019, Gartner predicted that by 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault, primarily due to misconfigurations.
AI in Security: 74% of executives believe that the benefits posed by generative AI outweigh the associated concerns, according to a 2023 Capgemini report.
The unique characteristics of cloud environments drive the need for these solutions, as Clouds are highly dynamic, with resources and workloads constantly shifting.
Traditional security solutions often struggle to keep up with the speed of change. On the other hand, CSPM and DSPM are designed for agility and flexibility so they can adapt easily and quickly to changes in the cloud environment.
Most importantly, these solutions offer real-time visibility into cloud security posture, enabling organizations to quickly detect and address potential security risks. Furthermore, they enable continuous compliance monitoring, allowing organizations to meet regulatory requirements and industry standards.
What is CSPM?
CSPM is a security approach that assesses the security posture of an organization’s cloud environment. It gives organizations real-time visibility into their cloud security posture, enabling them to detect potential security risks and take immediate remediation actions.
According to Gartner, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions and services are designed to continuously monitor and manage the security of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings in the cloud. The services are geared towards preventing, detecting, and responding to potential risks to the cloud infrastructure.
CSPM solutions use an automated combination of tools and manual processes to assess the security posture of cloud environments. They scan cloud infrastructure – including compute, storage, and networking resources – for security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance violations. Moreover, these solutions offer recommendations for remediation as well as ranking security risks based on severity.
CSPM also helps organizations ensure their cloud environments are secure and compliant, reducing the risk of data breaches or other security incidents. Furthermore, these solutions enable organizations to maximize their cloud security spend by identifying areas where security can be enhanced while costs are reduced.
CSPM benefits
With AI and automation, CSPM can quickly detect threats and automate remediations, streamlining the entire process. It also monitors cloud resources across different environments like Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Here are a few key advantages of CSPM:
Offer more control: Organizations have greater control over their cloud security policies and can guarantee their PaaS services and virtual machines remain compliant with evolving regulations. Through CSPM, users can apply their policies across management groups, subscriptions, and tenants.
Provide a simplified and connected solution: CSPM can launch and configure across large-scale environments with AI and automation, enabling rapid threat identification, investigation, and remediation. It can also connect existing tools into a single management system, streamlining threat mitigation.
Increase awareness: CSPM continuously monitors the security status of cloud resources across multiple environments, allowing organizations to assess assets across servers, containers, databases and storage.
Lend assistance and provide recommendations: CSPM provides insights into an organization’s current state and can suggest improved security posture. It can also monitor and automatically apply legal and regulatory compliance changes, helping to reduce the attack surface.
How does CSPM compare to Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)?
Cloud security posture management (CSPM) scans a wide variety of cloud resources to give organizations an in-depth analysis of potential security vulnerabilities in their cloud environment. These tools provide a basic assessment of potential vulnerabilities and can use AI or machine learning algorithms to predict or correlate specific vulnerabilities. However, CSPM cannot identify what data is at risk or recognize what security posture it should adhere to, meaning it does not know who owns the data and who has access to it.
What is DSPM?
DSPM, on the other hand, focuses squarely on the data layer. It identifies sensitive data, monitors risks to business-critical data, and remediates issues by fixing permissions, entitlements, or sharing settings. Unlike CSPM, DSPM operates on the assumption that not all data is equal and therefore requires different security postures.
Key Differences
While CSPM focuses on infrastructure-level vulnerabilities, DSPM addresses data layer risks. This means DSPM tools not only discover and classify data but also leverage AI to learn and maintain the appropriate security posture for different types of data.
Essentially, while CSPM focuses on safeguarding an organization’s cloud environment, Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) prioritizes protecting an organization’s structured and unstructured data. DSPM solutions scan and monitor data to guarantee it is secure, compliant, and meets industry standards.
Plus, DSPM solutions give organizations real-time visibility into their data security posture – allowing them to detect and address potential data security risks or threats before they become major issues.
Other distinctions to be aware of:
- CSPM focuses on the security posture of cloud environments, while DSPM focuses on the security posture of data
- CSPM solutions typically integrate with cloud service providers, while DSPM solutions typically integrate with data storage and management solutions
- CSPM solutions are designed to identify and remediate security risks in real-time, while DSPM solutions focus on continuous monitoring and compliance
Cloud security posture management (CSPM) can scan a wide variety of cloud resources, giving organizations an in-depth and detailed analysis of potential security vulnerabilities in their cloud environment. CSPM can provide a straightforward, lightweight scan of those resources to provide a basic assessment of potential vulnerabilities.
There are many tools that offer CSPM, and some leverage feature sets that include AI or machine learning algorithms that can predict or correlate specific vulnerabilities.
But compared to DSPM, a CSPM cannot identify what data is actually at risk. Additionally, it cannot recognize what security posture it should adhere to — meaning who owns the data and who has access to it.
Leveraging AI
Modern DSPM tools can autonomously identify risks and remediate those issues by fixing permissions/entitlements/sharing.
The most significant difference between the two types of posture management comes down to context. Instead of being data agnostic like CSPM, DSPM operates on the assumption that not all data is equal, nor should it require a similar security posture.
Not only does DSPM offer data discovery and classification, but it also typically leverages AI or
Machine Learning to “learn” what security posture it should maintain.
AI-driven DSPM tools offer sophisticated data analysis, predictive threat modeling, and automated responses to security incidents, providing unprecedented insights into an organization’s data security posture.
Best of both worlds
Despite their differences, CSPM and DSPM solutions are both critical components of a comprehensive cloud security strategy. For today’s cloud-centric organization, CSPM and DSPM should be viewed as complementary solutions that work together to provide a comprehensive approach to cloud security.
Though CSPM is essential for cloud security, leveraging both CSPM and DSPM together provides a more robust level of protection from cloud threats.
Organizations should consider implementing both CSPM and DSPM solutions to guarantee their cloud environments and data are secure and compliant.
In doing so, organizations gain real-time visibility into their cloud security posture and data security posture, reduce the risk of security incidents, and optimize cloud security spend.
DSPM with Concentric AI
Concentric AI Semantic Intelligence is a SaaS-based solution that leverages artificial intelligence and deep learning to automatically discover and protect the most sensitive and confidential information contained within your file sharing repositories.
Our technology automatically delivers a content-based, categorized view of your data, including a risk rating for all exposed data. This allows your data security, privacy, and compliance teams to easily find and correct inappropriate sharing of important data files.
With Concentric AI, you get a managed DSPM solution. We know that operationalizing data security can be a significant challenge, even with a full-time security team. From the complexities of diverse data sources and evolving threats to the pressures of compliance and resource constraints, the need for a holistic, autonomous and managed solution is real.
Concentric AI’s Managed DSPM offers a unique blend of autonomous technology and human expertise. Our solution autonomously handles most security tasks, while our dedicated team addresses more intricate challenges. This two-pronged approach ensures comprehensive data protection, reducing potential liabilities and providing 24/7 security assurance.
Book a demo today and experience the freedom of protecting your data without rules, regex, or end-user involvement.
