Manny Rivelo is the CEO of Forcepoint.
Data is the heartbeat of any organization. We all covet the data we have, and we know that hackers also covet the data we have. You really can't have cybersecurity without a strong posture, or readiness, for data security. However, understanding where your data resides today is more challenging than ever.
Data is everywhere—structured and unstructured, inside and outside the enterprise. The rapid movement of data, combined with an overwhelming number of tools and regulatory requirements, makes managing data security a daunting task. As your data moves through various channels—email, cloud, web, AI tools—it must be protected. Safeguarding confidential information has become an existential priority.
One company’s treasure—its sensitive data—is another’s compliance failure or a cybercriminal’s payday. This reality underscores the importance of not allowing business secrets or your customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) to leave your premises.
As I described previously, the strategic imperative of data security posture management (DSPM) is evolving as a critical strategy for organizations seeking to safeguard their information assets. Let’s explore three ways DSPM can revolutionize your approach to data security and help you build a robust data governance framework.
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Unveiling The Hidden Dangers: Comprehensive Risk Assessment
The first step to protecting your data is understanding where it's vulnerable. Some DSPM solutions can leverage AI, ML or regular expressions to scan massive volumes of structured and unstructured data. (Regular expressions, or Regex, are patterns used to match and manipulate specific sequences of characters in text; for example, a string of characters to search for social security numbers in a document.) These technologies together are used to rapidly identify sensitive information and classify it according to its level of risk.
However, not all solutions are equal in the fidelity of classification. Buyer beware of the differences between large language models, small language models, context-driven approaches and Regex.
The best choice is knitting together various AI small language models with context to create a unified, seamless network, or “AI mesh” for managing and protecting data across an organization's entire technological landscape. This intricate and cohesive structure interlinks different components to provide a holistic view and robust, fast protection of data assets.
Imagine being able to sift through millions of files in a single workday, automatically flagging personally identifiable information or intellectual property. DSPM based on AI-mesh technology can quickly add classification rules, locating and categorizing information that, if leaked or stolen, could be detrimental to your bottom line or reputation. This deep visibility enables you to prioritize security measures, allocate resources where they're most needed and proactively mitigate risk before it turns into a crisis.
Staying Ahead Of The Regulators: Continuous Compliance Monitoring
Staying compliant with ever-evolving data privacy regulations (like GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA) is a complex and time-consuming endeavor. In an era of escalating cyber threats and data breaches, stakeholders demand assurance that their sensitive information is safeguarded effectively.
DSPM acts as your compliance watchdog, continuously monitoring data access, usage and storage to ensure alignment with industry standards and regulatory frameworks. You can maintain detailed audit trails, demonstrate due diligence to regulators and avoid costly fines or reputational damage.
By adopting DSPM best practices and demonstrating a commitment to proactive cybersecurity, organizations can inspire trust and confidence among customers, partners and investors.
Fighting Fire With Fire: Proactive Threat Detection And Response
DSPM doesn't just assess risk; it actively combats it. Leveraging AI and ML, DSPM solutions can streamline security operations, automate routine tasks and optimize resource allocation. By continuously monitoring for anomalies, DSPM can alert security teams to potential threats before they escalate. It can detect points of vulnerability, monitor and report on issues in real time and automatically or reactively neutralize those threats.
Advanced orchestration of workflows allows teams to automate corrective actions as the discovery happens and then close that loop dynamically. Remediation steps could involve automatically moving inappropriately stored documents to more secure storage or deleting extraneous copies as they are discovered.
Administrators could also restrict unauthorized access and prevent hackers from trying to exploit improper permission settings. This proactive approach minimizes the impact of the risk of breaches, protects your business continuity and frees your security team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting.
Conclusion
In an era of escalating cyber threats, robust data security is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity. DSPM offers a comprehensive, proactive and intelligent approach to managing your data security. By adopting DSPM, you can:
• Uncover hidden risks and vulnerabilities in your data landscape.
• Ensure continuous compliance with complex regulations.
• Detect and respond to threats in real time.
• Build trust with customers, partners and stakeholders.
In my next article, I plan to discuss how DSPM can be your enterprise on-ramp for safely using AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot and many more to gain competitive advantages.
Data is the heart of your business. Let DSPM be the guardian of its security.
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