Making sense of modern security postures can be challenging. In the past few years, the complexity of most IT environments has skyrocketed as organizations migrate much of their infrastructure into public cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. As such, many security teams struggle to keep track of sensitive data, configurations, compliance issues, and security threats.

In response, the security industry is increasingly looking to two key tools—data security posture management (DSPM) and cloud security posture management (CSPM)—to understand and control their sprawling IT environments better. This article will explore the two tools, how they differ and complement each other, and why they’re important for understanding modern security postures.

Data Security Posture Management

What is DSPM? DSPM, first coined by Gartner in 2022, refers to solutions that help organizations find, classify, and secure data across various platforms, including SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS. These solutions continuously monitor these platforms, discover sensitive data, identify vulnerabilities in data stores, and offer security teams quick fixes to protect against unauthorized access, breaches, and compliance issues.

Benefits of DSPM

The most crucial benefit of using DSPM is that these tools find and classify sensitive data that may have been lost across complex cloud environments. This ensures that security teams have a comprehensive view of their data stores so they can take measures to protect them.

However, DSPM solutions also monitor for potential threats to said data. Continuous monitoring capabilities allow these solutions to identify and alert security teams to security threats as and when they happen, whenever they occur. Essentially, they sound the alarm before a security incident can cause any damage, not after.

The automation capabilities of DSPM solutions are also extremely valuable for security teams. The machine learning algorithms in these tools simplify risk assessments, helping security teams identify and address potential risks with minimal manual intervention.

Ultimately, these capabilities help organizations maintain compliance with relevant data protection requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA, as well as frameworks like NIST. In short, DSPM protects data and ensures compliance with data protection regulations.

Limitations of DSPM

That said, DSPM solutions are not without their limitations. Implementing these solutions, particularly in multi-cloud environments, can be highly complicated and requires significant expertise in regulatory nuances and an understanding of data security best practices.

Moreover, DSPM solutions typically come with a hefty price tag. While undoubtedly worthwhile, the cost of these tools can put a serious strain on cybersecurity budgets. If you’re considering purchasing a DSPM solution, make sure you conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis before making your decision.

It’s also worth mentioning that DSPM is solely a data security solution and does not consider all the nuances of cloud security, like infrastructure misconfigurations. This, however, brings us to CSPM.

Cloud Security Posture Management

What is CSPM? CSPM focuses on securing cloud infrastructures, helping security teams understand their complex cloud environments, monitoring for configuration, security, and compliance issues, and offering solutions to these problems. Whereas DSPM solutions focus on the data in cloud environments, CSPM focuses on the infrastructure thathouses that data.

Benefits of CSPM

Organizations that purchase CSPM solutions benefit from a comprehensive view of their cloud environment. These tools identify and fix misconfigurations to mitigate vulnerabilities, identify and remediate mistakes that could result in non-compliance with regulations, and monitor for potential threats so security teams can respond.

Perhaps the most important benefit of CSPM is that it dramatically reduces the work required to ensure compliance. By continuously monitoring cloud configurations and enforcing security policies in line with relevant regulations, security teams need not spend countless hours conducting compliance reviews – the solution does it for them so they can spend their time on other tasks.

It’s also worth noting that CSPM solutions are inherently scalable. Cloud environments have changed rapidly in the past few years and, by all indications, will continue to change in the years ahead. CSPM tools are designed to effortlessly scale alongside cloud infrastructure, securing and monitoring environments even as they grow and change.

Ultimately, CSPM solutions are all about prevention. By identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities as and when they appear, these solutions prevent them from turning into security incidents, helping security teams keep pace with increasingly sophisticated attackers.

Limitations of CSPM

Again, though, like any solution, CSPM isn’t perfect. It shares many of the same limitations as DSPM, both have a complex set-up process that requires a deep understanding of cloud security best practices and a significant cost, especially for smaller organizations or those that manage extensive infrastructure. Conversely to DSPM, CSPM solutions lack comprehensive data protection capabilities, which brings us to our final point.

DSPM and CSPM: A Holistic Cloud Security Solution

You’ve probably already figured out where we’re going with this, but the only way to ensure total cloud protection is to combine DSPM and CSPM in a holistic cloud security strategy. Your organization may not need a holistic cloud security strategy, but if you work in critical infrastructure industries like finance, energy, or manufacturing, combining CSPM and DSPM is the only strategy for you.

Essentially, DSPM and CSPM compensate for many of each other’s weaknesses. What DSPM lacks in infrastructure management, CSPM makes up for, and vice versa. Unfortunately, using these solutions together will only add cost and complexity to your security strategy, but without them, your organization could suffer a breach. Essentially, the options are to pay the price now or a much heavier price later.