Computing on the cloud essentially means that your data is on someone else's computer.
And with the global average cost of a data breach being 4.45 million dollars,
or a violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being a hefty fine,
it's easy to admit that remaining security compliant with your data is extremely important.
That's where Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) comes into play.
DSPM solutions puts you at the helm of your cloud
data inventory, interactions and access, then gives you a platform to help
mitigate risks, find and remediate vulnerabilities, and ensure a compliant security posture.
It does this with three things in mind: visibility, movement and protection.
And to explain these things, I'll use this example topology diagram.
First problem, where is our data stored?
It's not just in the databases.
Sensitive information gets passed to all components of your topology.
What if sensitive information is in an instant message
or Excel spreadsheet or PDF document?
What if someone creates their own version of the database for development purposes?
Then most likely this database is not going to have the same controls as the original.
For that, you need visibility. And DSPM solutions help to identify all locations where data resides,
even shadow data that's not specifically identified in your official inventory.
Next problem, where does the data go?
Well, to know where the data goes, you need to know its access points.
Sure, we have these connections in our topology diagram, but what about all of its users?
Who has access to what?
What kind of third parties do you interact with and what access do they have?
For that, you need to know the movement. And DSPM solutions help
to analyze both potential and actual flows of data.
Last problem, what kind of risk do we face by having this data and all of these different components?
Well, all systems have vulnerabilities.
So which components are the most vulnerable?
Are the third parties you interact with responsible enough for the data they have access to?
If a data leak did happen, do you have the safeguards in place to mitigate the total effect?
For that, you need data protection.
And DSPM solutions help to uncover these vulnerabilities
in your data, interactions and access and compliance controls,
and then gives you a risk based prioritization
of these vulnerabilities and remediation recommendations.
Okay, so once we have these three things in place, then we can start getting some payoffs.
First, reducing exposed data.
For this, you can make sure that your data is securely shared with only
its intended recipients and inaccessible to unauthorized parties.
Then you can remove any sensitive information from your cloud
operations or various SaaS applications.
Next up, you can prevent data leakage.
And you do this by safeguarding the data and making sure it doesn't go into the wrong hands.
You can monitor your flows and transactions between different cloud environments and your various SaaS applications.
Along with the previous two benefits, you can better mitigate third party exposure
by analyzing all of your third party vendors and what kind of data they have access to.
Then determining whether or not they have the necessary certifications to handle such information.
And once you have that information, you can decide whether or not you're going to maintain
or exclude their access to that data and streamline this risk assessment of your third party vendors.
Last but certainly not least, you can monitor data transactions.
And this allows you to oversee data transactions between different countries and regions
that may have those data retention regulations in place.
This way allows you to remain security compliant.
So, if you're going to take away anything from this video, know that data security is very important.
And if it's not obvious by now, there's a lot of issues that go along with it.
So to help you out, check out Data Security Posture Management solutions.
Thanks for watching.
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