Data security posture management (DSPM) solutions are fast becoming essential to many organizations’ data protection strategies. In the short time since their introduction in the 2022 Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security, these tools have already helped hundreds of entities protect sensitive business data across increasingly complex and diverse cloud environments.

Continuous monitoring is perhaps DSPM’s most important capability. Threats to sensitive data can come at any time, day or night, so organizations need solutions to monitor that data around the clock. With this in mind, let’s explore why continuous monitoring is an essential component of DSPM and how it enhances data protection, compliance, and threat mitigation.

What is DSPM For?

DSPM arose from the problems ofthe increasing complexity of cloud environments and the increasing difficulty of finding and securing data in those environments. Over the past few years, many organizations have begun storing sensitive information across various data stores, including cloud data repositories, multi-cloud environments, and IaaS platforms. While storing data this way offers many benefits, it has complicated data security.

The problem is that data often gets lost or overlooked in these environments. For example, administrators may create new infrastructure, data, and data backups without informing security teams, which can result in security teams failing to secure this data. DSPM helps them find and secure it.

What Does DSPM Do?

DSPM solutions secure sensitive data stored off-premises. They find, classify, and secure sensitive information by providing continuous monitoring, data discovery, and quick fixes for vulnerabilities or misconfigurations. Ultimately, DSPM protects against unauthorized access, breaches, and compliance issues.

What is Continuous Monitoring?

In broad terms, continuous monitoring is the process of constantly observing and assessing a system, network, or environment to detect and address risks, anomalies, or unauthorized activity in real-time. In the context of cybersecurity, this means using automated tools to track data access, user behavior, configurations, and system changes to prevent potential breaches and swiftly respond to security incidents.

The Benefits of Continuous Monitoring in DSPM

As noted, continuous monitoring is one of DSPM’s key capabilities. It ensures that sensitive data is always secured. The benefits of continuous monitoring in DSPM include:

Proactive Threat Detection and Mitigation

Continuous monitoring offers proactive threat detection and mitigation benefits. It alerts security teams to and remediates threats in real-time to prevent potential security incidents, such as unauthorized access or data leakage. Many DSPM tools use advanced analytics techniques to uncover suspicious behaviors so organizations can investigate before any damage occurs.

Streamlined Compliance

Continuous monitoring also helps companies comply with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA by consistently enforcing data governance and security policies.Organizations can continuously monitor data permissions, access paths, and user activities, quickly identifying and remediating potential compliance issues.

The best DSPM tools offer comprehensive data visibility across both cloud and on-premises environments and generate reports to help organizations demonstrate compliance. As a result, security teams no longer need to conduct manual, time-consuming audits.

Faster Incident Response

DSPM’s continuous monitoring capability also facilitates streamlined incident response. The concept is simple: the sooner a security team gets an alert, the sooner they can respond. Whether it’s a vulnerability, misconfiguration, or suspicious behavior, DSPM tools alert security teams the moment they occur.

Comprehensive Data Visibility

Continuous monitoring enables visibility into both structured and unstructured data spread across complex cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. This visibility is crucial for managing “shadow data”—data that exists outside approved systems or workflows and poses significant security risks.

Real-time visibility across environments ensures that security teams are aware of where sensitive data resides and can enforce consistent security policies across the entire data ecosystem. By continuously mapping data flows and access points, DSPM helps eliminate blind spots, allowing organizations to identify and secure all data assets.

Looking Ahead

It’s important to recognize that this is only the beginning for DSPM. Gartner predicts that spending on cloud security will grow 24% throughout 2024, and DSPM will have contributed a significant part of that growth. As cloud adoption continues to grow and cloud environments become increasingly complex, more and more organizations will incorporate DSPM into their data security strategies.

If you’re already considering purchasing a DSPM solution, Gartner has a wealth of resources available to help you make an informed decision. For example, you could check out Gartner’s DSPM review page or its Voice of the Customer report.

Josh is a Content writer at Bora. He graduated with a degree in Journalism in 2021 and has a background in cybersecurity PR. He’s written on a wide range of topics, from AI to Zero Trust, and is particularly interested in the impacts of cybersecurity on the wider economy.