Concentric AI Recognized in DSPM Category in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Cyber-Risk Management 2024

July 29, 2024
Mark Stone
5 min read

Cloud computing has revolutionized the business landscape and is now practically ubiquitous in almost every industry. But while it promises substantial cost savings, enhanced business agility, and a remarkable boost to productivity, it also introduces numerous data challenges.  

When it comes to data protection, perhaps the most difficult challenge is that business-critical data has so many types: intellectual property, financial data, business confidential information, PII, PCI data and more. 

Traditional data protection methods like rules and regex won’t cut it in today’s fast-paced, cloud-centric environment. Fact is, it’s easier than ever for your employees to create, modify and share sensitive content with anyone.  

Therefore, a proactive approach is required; organizations must deploy security strategies and solutions that address these concerns. If they’re not proactive, and merely rely on outdated or on-premises security technology, they face higher risks of data leakage and deployment complications. Identifying meaningful data risk is crucial, and it requires understanding data sensitivity, data lineage, and infrastructure or access configurations. 

Today, many organizations are adopting some form of data security posture management (DSPM) to assess their cloud security posture, so they are in a better position to protect data wherever it lives. 

Where do I start with data security posture management?

Many organizations look to trusted guides for direction to mitigate data security challenges. The Gartner Hype Cycle is a renowned tool that provides insights into the maturity and adoption of specific technologies. By understanding where a technology sits on the Hype Cycle, organizations can make informed decisions about when to invest, wait, and explore alternatives.  

The Gartner Hype Cycle can guide organizations towards the most promising technologies and strategies for cyber risk management. It helps them understand the current state of data discovery and classification solutions, their potential benefits, and the challenges they may face in implementing them.  

In this article, we’ll focus specifically on the Data Security Posture Management section (page 20) of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management.  

What are the data security posture management challenges?

Today, enterprises are struggling with three key data challenges: 

  • Massive growth in data, often exponentially from year to year 
  • Massive migration of data to the Cloud 
  • Diverse types of data (such as intellectual property, financial, business confidential, and regulated PII/PCI/PHI data) in increasingly complex environments 

With Cloud, every file or data element can be easily shared with anyone around the world. But this data can also be easily copied, duplicated, modified and shared. Imagine 100 variations of a redlined sensitive contract that needs to be protected, with each version containing different access privileges. 

Matching user access against specific datasets has been historically complicated, especially since most IAM and data security tools operate in silos. Tracking the evolution of that data across various formats, data locations, and shadow data makes things even more difficult. 

Organizations need to know what data is being shared with whom, and track data lineage as it moves across the environment.  

Identifying where the data may be at risk is another crucial step, as it provides visibility into which data is being shared in accordance with corporate security guidelines and where violations are happening. 

All this, combined with new and evolving regulations to adhere to, creates significant hurdles for organizations that need a clear understanding of their security posture.  

Why is data security posture management (DSPM) so important?

As mentioned above, with cloud, it’s easier than ever for employees to create, modify and share sensitive content with anyone. But organizations cannot rely on their employees to ensure that data is shared with the right people.   

Organizations are looking to validate their security posture by identifying undue data exposure, misconfiguration and missing security controls. 

And as the regulatory and compliance landscape continues to evolve, the need for solutions like DSPM has increased substantially. 

DSPM helps organizations validate their security posture by identifying any data at risk, misconfiguration, and missing security controls. It offers real-time visibility into data flows to assess data risks and non-compliance issues. 

Ultimately, data security posture management enables organizations to gain a clear view of the where, who and how of their sensitive data: where it is, who has access to it, and how it has been used.  

What does Gartner say about DSPM products?

To evaluate DSPM products, Gartner recommends that organizations compare a solution’s ability to discover shadow data, create comprehensive data maps, and prioritize datasets for privacy and security. They should assess how a solution integrates with on-premises and cloud security stacks, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. DSPM should deliver near real-time data analysis, minimizing overhead and false positives, and organizations should assess the frequency and speed of their data scanning and iterative updates.  

Gartner’s analysis shows that data discovery has a Transformational benefit rating and is in the embryonic stage of maturity. 

How can Concentric AI help organizations improve their data security posture?

Concentric AI is a recognized vendor in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management. It uses advanced machine learning technologies to autonomously scan, categorize, and classify data, including financial data, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, and business confidential information. Our solution works across all types of data repositories, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in structured or unstructured data stores.  

With Concentric AI’s Semantic Intelligence™ Solution for Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), security teams can easily identify business—and privacy–sensitive content without rules or policies. Semantic-based discovery allows enterprises to understand their data with context. 

Our Risk Distance™ analysis leverages deep learning to compare each data element with baseline security practices used by similar data to identify risk, also without rules and policies. More importantly, our solution can remediate these access risks as they occur — whether it’s fixing access control issues or permissions, disabling the sharing of sensitive file with a third party, or blocking an attachment on a messaging service. 

Concentric AI’s agentless, API-based solution provides connectivity to a wide variety of data repositories so security teams can govern access to data wherever it resided. Our solution is easy to deploy, and capable of delivering value in days without any upfront work required. 

Concentric AI’s DSPM is also a managed data security solution that offers a unique blend of autonomous technology and human expertise. Concentric AI 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.  

As Gartner’s Hype Cycle and market analysis suggest, data security posture management is more than just a trend.    

Book a demo today to see firsthand — with your own data — how Concentric AI can simplify the complex challenges of identifying and protecting your data.

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