# What is Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)?

> Data security posture management (DSPM) is an emerging, non-standard market category for processes and tools that discover data stores, identify sensitive information, relate it to access, exposure, use, and protective controls, and prioritize data-security risk.

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## Content

Some implementations concentrate on public cloud storage; others cover software-as-a-service, data platforms, or on-premises systems.

DSPM typically uses service APIs to examine metadata and selected content, map permissions and data flows, and evaluate the context against policy. Useful findings identify owners and conditions such as sensitive data exposed publicly, broadly shared, copied into an unmanaged repository, or accessible through an excessive entitlement.

### Key points

- **Inventory and classification:** Determine supported repositories and formats, scan scope, classification methods, and whether duplicates, backups, and dormant stores are represented.
- **Risk context:** Combine sensitivity with access, exposure, activity, encryption, retention, ownership, and business purpose. Validate important findings instead of treating scores as objective truth.
- **Governed remediation:** Route changes to owners, preserve required availability and records, and confirm outcomes. Limit scanner privileges, temporary copies, extracted samples, analyst access, and retention because discovery processes sensitive information.
- **Important limitation:** DSPM has no consensus feature boundary. API permissions, sampling, classification errors, unsupported formats, encrypted content, stale scans, and incomplete identity context can misstate risk. It does not replace governance, loss prevention, access control, incident response, or qualified privacy and compliance review.

### Related terms

[Data discovery](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-discovery/>) · [Data classification](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-classification/>) · [Data loss prevention (DLP)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-loss-prevention/>) · [Data security](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-security/>) · [Cloud security posture management (CSPM)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/cloud-security-posture-management/>) · [Data-centric audit and protection (DCAP)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-centric-audit-and-protection/>)

### Sources

[Microsoft Learn: Data Security Posture Management overview](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/data-security-posture-management-learn-about) · [NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Security and Privacy Controls](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/53/r5/upd1/final) · [NIST SP 1800-39 initial public draft: Data Classification Practices](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/1800/39/ipd)

## Attribution and scope

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