Challenges Of Implementing DSPM And How To Overcome Them

Data security posture management (DSPM) is an organization’s data management plan for identifying, assessing and mitigating risks associated with sensitive data. This typically involves analyzing and clustering the various kinds of data the company deals with, coming up with relevant regulations, enforcing them, and monitoring the effectiveness.

While it may look like an easy and straightforward action plan, there are numerous challenges and roadblocks associated with them. Let us look at what are some of these challenges and how to overcome them.

Objectives of DSPM

Before examining the challenges faced in incorporating DSPM, let us define its objectives. This will help us understand the pain points and enable us to approach the problem from different angles.

The main objective of DSPM is maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an organization’s critical data. Securing data involves protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access and data manipulation. Thus, it reduces the risk of data breaches and minimizes their effects, enabling customers and other stakeholders to feel more confident in your data security.

Challenges of Implementing DSPM

As mentioned in the introductory section, the first step to implementing DSPM involves analyzing and grouping the data. This especially becomes challenging if an organization deals with diverse datasets. Let’s look at the key challenges in detail:

Filtering the Correct Data

With more data points comes more noise, which hampers the quality of useful data. In order to filter the correct data to curate regulations and policies for the company, you first need a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the data flow, dependencies, and potential vulnerabilities.

Strain on the Resources

Implementing and maintaining effective security measures can be difficult for many firms due to resource limitations, such as insufficient manpower, tight financial restrictions, or a lack of cybersecurity experience.

Third-Party Risks

For a variety of purposes related to data storage, processing, or administration, organizations frequently depend on third-party vendors and service providers. It can be difficult to manage these third-party companies’ security posture and make sure they adhere to the necessary security requirements. Doing so requires regular evaluation of their security procedures and contractual commitments, which is quite an overhead.

Compliance Requirements

All the policies regarding data regulation need to comply with the rules put forth by regulatory bodies like HIPAA, PCI, DSS and so forth. Companies are obliged to establish explicit data classification rules and procedures to categorize data depending on their sensitivity and regulatory requirements. This adds complexity to data security posture management.

Security and Usability

While it is important to have stringent security in place, it is also equally important to find the silver lining between security and usability. Finding the right balance between strong security controls and user-friendly experiences can be quite challenging.

Lack of User Awareness and Behavior

Adding to the list, lack of user awareness and behavior might continue to pose problems for technical security measures. Risky actions by employees are possible, including poor password management, falling for phishing schemes, and improper handling of sensitive data. It takes constant training and awareness campaigns to educate users and alter their behavior.

Overcoming Obstacles: Remedies and Precautions

Now that we’ve explored the various key challenges of implementing DSPM, let us see how we can overcome them:

Having Adequate Resources

The first step for creating a robust DSPM involves having adequate resources, including skilled personnel, money, and technology. This may require recruiting or educating cybersecurity specialists, purchasing reliable security products, and allocating adequate cash to guarantee successful deployment and upkeep of security measures.

Risk Assessments

Regular risk assessments can be carried out to identify and address critical vulnerabilities. Based on these, resources can be allocated to mitigate and monitor the security controls.

Management Plan to Monitor Third Parties

If your organization happens to use vendor services, using a management plan to monitor third parties and their security practices should be set up. Before using a vendor’s services, perform due diligence on them by examining their security measures, contractual duties, and adherence to relevant standards. To guarantee continuing adherence to security requirements, periodically review and amend vendor contracts.

Continuous Monitoring System

Further, to create a continuous monitoring system, utilize security monitoring tools, intrusion detection systems, and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. To quickly discover, contain, investigate, and address security events, create an efficient incident response plan. To find areas for improvement and adjust security measures, perform a post-incident analysis.

Regular Audits and Assessments

Complementing the monitoring and logging system by performing regular audits and assessments can also enhance and ease implementation efforts. This includes compliance audits, vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and security posture evaluations. The findings from these assessments should be used to identify areas for improvement and implement the necessary remediation actions.

Engage in Industry Collaborations

Security management is not a one-time thing wherein practices are incorporated for once and followed throughout. It is dynamic in nature and keeps changing. Hence, in order to be aware of the latest trends in the industry, it is advised to engage in industry collaborations and information rich forums to stay updated on emerging threats, mitigation techniques, and other best practices. This enhances one’s knowledge base and helps in building a collective defense against the latest threats.

Regular Training and Awareness Programs for Employees

Lastly, employees should be given regular training and awareness programs to improve their understanding of data security best practices. A culture of security awareness should be promoted, emphasizing the importance of strong passwords, phishing prevention, and responsible data handling. Employees should be engaged as active participants in maintaining the data security posture.

Conclusion

It’s difficult to manage a strong data security plan. One needs to have complete contextual awareness of the data, including the IAM and ways of preventing exploitation. In order to govern data security for all people, devices, and software, and to provide total visibility into data in use, data in motion, and data at rest – DSPM is a crucial pillar in the support of the data security mix.

In conclusion, there are a number of challenges that can be faced when implementing DSPM. However, by taking the time to understand these challenges and developing strategies to overcome them as discussed above, organizations can successfully implement DSPM and reap the benefits of improved data quality, reduced costs, and enhanced decision-making.

Also Read: The Importance Of Data Privacy And Security In AI