Author: Julia Grits, Netwrix Brand Manager
Data
We all know there’s a massive amount of data on the Internet—but how massive?
Let’s put it in numbers:
1 zettabyte = 1 sextillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
With the rise of TikTok and other video-driven platforms, video now accounts for nearly 54% of all data traffic.
For businesses, consider this: over 200 million emails are sent every single minute.
So, what about security?
From a cybersecurity standpoint, company data is typically classified by sensitivity, origin, and usage context.
Main categories:
- Public Data
- Internal Data / Internal Use Only
- Confidential Data
- Personal Data (PII—Personally Identifiable Information)
- Sensitive Personal Data (SPII)
- Regulated Data (Compliance-bound)
- Intellectual Property (IP Data)
You can’t protect what you don’t know exists
Hackers only need one vulnerability to cause harm—so every possible gap must be closed. Understanding your data is crucial to designing a solid protection strategy.
That’s where DSPM comes in: it provides visibility into data, its sensitivity, and access-related risks.
In short, DSPM helps to:
- discover and classify data
- analyze access and usage
- protect it across environments
- detect leaks and anomalies
- reduce redundancy and cost inefficiencies
Applying DSPM to data types
Public data
Identifies when public and confidential data coexist, preventing accidental leaks through excessive permissions or shared links.
Internal data
Checks if internal documents remain internal and detects unauthorized copies or access.
Confidential data:
DSPM uses classifiers (keywords, patterns, file types) to answer:
- what types of sensitive data exist
- where they are stored (on-prem, cloud…)
- who has access and how it changes
- how files move inside and outside the company
- whether security policies are being followed
PII & SPII
Privacy laws vary globally but exist everywhere. DSPM automatically identifies and labels such data to keep it secure and compliant.
Compliance & regulated data
Detects datasets under industry regulations, tracks violations, and prepares compliance reports for audits.
Intellectual property
Relevant for manufacturing and IT companies—DSPM protects R&D files, design documents, code repositories, and integrations with external environments like Git.
AI and new security challenges
AI and machine learning improve efficiency, but they also increase the risk of sensitive data exposure through prompts or automated analysis.
DSPM helps mitigate this by ensuring proper data classification, access control, and monitoring of data movement across AI tools.
Under the hood
Compared to DLP, DSPM is a relatively new category.
Currently, it looks more like a vendor ecosystem than a single product—but it’s rapidly evolving into full-fledged, data-centric security platforms.
Typical DSPM components:
- Data Discovery & Classification
- Access Governance & Permissions Management
- Compliance & Reporting
- Data Security Automation & Remediation
- Data Leakage Detection & Prevention
Plus, optional integrations with:
- IAM, SIEM, and CSPM for unified security posture
- SaaS connectors (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce)
- AI/ML analytics for context and behavioral risk detection
Summary
According to Cybersecurity Insiders (late 2024), DSPM is the fastest-growing cybersecurity product category: 75% of organizations plan to implement DSPM within the next year.
And for good reason:
- 57% report excessive user access
- 50% lack visibility into sensitive data
- 46% struggle with security gaps caused by sheer data volume
In the era of data-driven business, DSPM bridges the gap between visibility and control—turning data awareness into real protection.
Sources:
* created, recorded, copied, or used (https://www.statista.com/)
**Cybersecurity Insiders “2024 Data Security Posture Management Adoption Report“
