In this article, we explore why Data Security Posture Management is essential for the modern organization and we also provide five use cases addressed by Forcepoint technology.
Managing the ever-revolving digital doors of an enterprise means keeping a watchful eye over a healthy mix of regulated data, intellectual property and sensitive information. The task is a painstaking process but a critical one for every organization.
When devising a data discovery strategy, it’s important to think about shining a light on your organization’s dark data. This refers to the old, obsolete and outdated data files no longer needed. While many organizations’ first instincts are to retain all data to help minimize potential risks, keeping everything actually increases those risks. Identifying Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT data) is a good starting point.
Data Discovery and Classification – Compliance, Plus Minimizing Data Breach Risk
There are over 160 global data privacy laws in place across the world today. That number continues to grow. These regulations dictate how local and multinational organizations must interact with and store sensitive data such as financial records or personally identifiable information.
The more countries your organization operates in, the more complicated and interwoven data security and compliance becomes. The continued sprawl of structured and unstructured data – in the form of sensitive information, regulated data and intellectual property – only accelerates an already complicated problem.
Data discovery and classification gives enterprises the handle on the data they need to secure it. The methodology enables security practitioners to locate data across different files and applications. It also applies labels categorizing the data as public, internal or confidential—and provides more visibility in the process. Having improved data visibility also paves the way for reducing the risk for data breaches. It’s impossible to secure data you cannot see.
Effective data discovery and classification tools help address the following use cases:
- Discovering data on-premises and in the cloud.
- Viewing permissions of who has access to that data and evaluating risk on an individual level.
- Separating Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial from valuable data.
- Covering a broad range of data fields and file types.
- Classifying data at scale accurately on an ongoing basis.
Forcepoint AI-powered Data Discovery and Classification Tools
Data discovery and classification tools need to provide answers to the four Ws. If they can’t, your entire data security strategy is at risk of being ineffective because you can’t protect the data you don’t know you have.
Forcepoint Data Security Posture Management (powered by Getvisibility) uses machine learning, artificial intelligence and large language models to supercharge discovery and classification, giving enterprises a panoramic view of their data and the risk for each file. Continuous self-learning models enforce greater accuracy and efficiency over time, enabling organizations to combat the sprawl that makes discovery and classification so difficult to maintain.
Artificial intelligence greatly increases the accuracy of classification and discovery through a 50-dimensional AI model trained using your unique data and files, as well as LLMs using synthetic data. The result is highly accurate classification that cannot be achieved merely with dictionary terms and rege
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) enables enterprises to identify, classify and orchestrate data to locate and respond to risks in near real time. Through AI-powered automation, organizations can proactively reduce risk and maintain compliance, scanning over 300 files per second – and up to 1 million files per hour – and classifying them with highly precise certainty.
It helps facilitate Zero Trust by identifying user permissions and adjusting for overshared files. It also reduces ROT data that can lead to more false positives or even data exfiltration and waste already limited resources. It gives a bird’s eye view of your data, enabling leaner and quicker data discovery without sacrificing efficacy.
DSPM classifies data across the enterprise within more than 70 file types. It continuously improves the accuracy of classification by using artificial intelligence to evaluate more file types with greater precision and efficiency. It provides data classification at scale and when combined with Forcepoint DLP pre-built policies, it makes it easier for companies to meet regulatory requirements with out-of-the-box compliance.
Article by: Forcepoint