In recent years, the digital landscape, cybersecurity demands, and threat trends have shifted, especially for businesses. Organizations increasingly employ many different tools and solutions for business and security purposes, often spread out in the cloud rather than centrally located, creating a massive attack surface that is difficult to protect.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) are two primary approaches organizations can take when attempting to secure cloud environments. Each strategy has its own uses, goals, and methods, and organizations may benefit from applying either one or a combination of the two, depending on their needs and resources.
Differences Between DSPM and CSPM
To decide how to approach cloud security, it is important to understand how DSPM and CSPM differ from each other. Each has “specific use cases that make them valuable for different aspects of cloud security,” factors that organizations must consider when conducting research and making decisions.
The important things to know about DSPM include:
- Purpose: Securing cloud assets by taking a data-driven approach.
- Functions: Discovering sensitive data, detecting risks to data, including security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and providing insight into data access and governance.
- Benefits: Visibility into sensitive data across all cloud platforms (including SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS), real-time monitoring, streamlined data protection processes, helping to align security strategies with regulations, and protecting against data leaks and breaches.
In contrast, CSPM is marked by features such as:
- Purpose: Securing cloud infrastructure and protecting all of an organization’s cloud services against cyber threats.
- Functions: Providing visibility into the cloud environment and security posture, monitoring cloud configurations, access controls, and security policies, and checking them against relevant standards and regulations.
- Benefits: Visibility into the entire cloud environment, detecting misconfigurations and threats across the cloud environment, scalable security for large and diverse cloud infrastructures, and preventing cloud security flaws from becoming major security incidents.
Determining Which Strategy Your Organization Needs
Choosing either DSPM, CSPM, or a mixture of the two requires research and consideration regarding your organization’s security goals. Organizations may benefit more from either DSPM or CSPM, depending on their security strategy, wants and needs, and their available resources and capabilities. The best approach may, in fact, be a combination of DSPM and CSPM tools and practices, providing the advantages of both in order to secure the organization’s entire cloud environment and protect sensitive data.
Also read: What Is Multi-Cloud Security? (Threats, Challenges & Solutions)
Organizations can benefit from the implementation of cloud-native DSPM if their security efforts are focused on protecting sensitive data. It can be used both to prevent data breaches and to maintain compliance with data security and privacy regulations. DSPM tools help organizations carry out processes like the discovery, classification, and monitoring of data, making it easier to identify, prioritize, and mitigate threats to data.
Cloud-native CSPM, on the other hand, may be a good option for organizations wishing to secure cloud infrastructure overall. CSPM tools help to detect and remediate cloud environment misconfigurations that may lead to cloud system breaches and attacks. They help organizations achieve the necessary security controls to secure their cloud environments and stay in line with industry standards for cloud infrastructure security.
Best Practices for Implementing DSPM and CSPM
Whether you intend to use DSPM, CSPM, or a strategy that combines facets of each, it is important to observe best practices for secure and effective implementation. Integrating new tools and solutions into your security strategy comes with a range of challenges and potential complications, and keeping certain tips in mind when adopting security measures can save time and effort in the short and long term.
Choosing, implementing, and managing CSPM tools demands a range of considerations. Organizations should search for tools that allow for easy deployment and seamless integration with other technology in order to minimize the burden of the transition. It is important to look for a CSPM platform that incorporates identity and access management (IAM) to protect against a large portion of risks to cloud environments without creating a drag on business operations. The goals and methods of your CSPM strategy should be clear, actionable, and driven by desired outcomes.
Implementing an effective DSPM platform for your organization also requires a thoughtful application to obtain the best protection possible. Organizations are encouraged to find DSPM tools with native asset discovery capabilities to ensure the effective protection of all valuable data. Utilizing DSPM in conjunction with other tools requires organizations to take steps to ensure smooth integration. In order to use DSPM to the greatest advantage in compliance, it is also essential to map data onto regulatory policies.
Conclusion
To reap the most benefit from your organization’s DSPM and CSPM tools, you must understand the functions and capabilities of each approach. Depending on your organization’s resources allotted for security measures, goals in developing a security strategy, and needs from your particular security solutions, it may be advantageous to use either DSPM, CSPM, or a combination of both. Navigating the complexities of the digital landscape, threat trends, and the market for security solutions requires knowledge and understanding of the available tools and their benefits, challenges, and functions. Organizations must do their due diligence and research in choosing, implementing, and managing security solutions and practices.
Leave a comment