Data discovery
Sensitive data found across cloud and on-premise, including the shadow copies.
Data, Identity & Privacy
Data Security Posture. Find the data you forgot you had.
You cannot protect what you cannot see, and sensitive data has a way of spreading: copied into a test database, exported to a spreadsheet, left in an old bucket. DSPM finds where your sensitive data actually lives, who can reach it, and whether it is exposed.
Why posture
Most organizations could not tell you where all their sensitive data is, and that is the problem. Data multiplies as it is used, and every forgotten copy is a breach waiting for an attacker to find it. Shadow data is the data you are not protecting because you do not know it is there.
Data Security Posture Management discovers and classifies sensitive data across your cloud and on-premise stores, maps who and what can access it, and flags where it is exposed or over-shared. It turns an unknown sprawl into a clear inventory you can actually secure, and a ranked list of the data risk worth fixing first.
The four questions
DSPM answers what you cannot today
A good data security program rests on four questions most teams cannot answer. DSPM answers all of them, continuously.
1
Where is our sensitive data?
Across every cloud and on-premise store, including the copies and exports nobody tracked.
2
What kind of data is it?
Classified by type and sensitivity: PII, financial, health, secrets, and regulated data.
3
Who can reach it?
The identities and paths that lead to it, including the access nobody intended to grant.
4
Is it exposed?
Public buckets, over-shared files, and unencrypted stores ranked by real risk.
The exposure map
One record set, four homes
Data multiplies as it is used, and protection rarely travels with it. Follow 18,240 customer records from the store you secured to the copy you never knew about.
Copy trail · customers tableIllustrative
The source
Production database
Encrypted at rest, six identities, every query audited. This is the store your controls were designed for.
Protected
Copy 1 · nightly
Analytics replica
Synced for dashboards. Forty-eight identities, no row filtering, and nobody re-checked the audience since 2024.
Broad
Copy 2 · one-off
Dev environment clone
Cloned to reproduce a bug, never deleted. Unmasked, reachable by every engineer and the CI pipeline.
Exposed
Copy 3 · manual
Spreadsheet export
Pulled for a campaign, saved to a personal drive, shared by link. Outside every control you own.
In the wild
Day 1Export deleted, share link revoked, owner walked through what happened.
Day 3Dev clone replaced with a masked dataset that reproduces the bug without the people.
Week 2Replica row-filtered and scoped to the nine analysts who actually query it.
StandingLineage watch on the source: every new copy of this table surfaces within a day.
The source was never the problem. DSPM exists for copies 1 through 3: same records, same regulatory weight, none of the protection. Discovery finds them, lineage explains them, and the fix lands in risk order.
What you get
From sprawl to a secured inventory
Classification
Data labeled by type and sensitivity, so protection matches what it is.
Access mapping
Who and what can reach each store, with the unintended paths surfaced.
Exposure detection
Public, over-shared, and unencrypted sensitive data flagged and ranked.
Prioritized remediation
A ranked plan to fix the riskiest data exposure first, with guidance.
Compliance evidence
A current data map supporting GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and audit requests.
Part of the loop
Where DSPM sits in VIGILE
See then secure
Identify the data, Guard the exposure
IdentifyData Security PostureGuard
DSPM is the Identify and Guard motions for your data at rest. We find where sensitive data lives and who can reach it, then close the exposure. It pairs with Data Loss Prevention, which guards the data in motion.
See Data Loss Prevention ›FAQ
Top 10 questions, frequently asked
DSPM looks at data at rest: where sensitive data lives, who can access it, and whether it is exposed. DLP watches data in motion, as it tries to leave over email, cloud, or USB. DSPM tells you what you have and where the risk is; DLP stops the risky movement. They cover different halves of data security and work best together.
It is sensitive data that exists outside your known, governed stores: a production database copied into a test environment, an export sitting in someone's drive, an old bucket nobody decommissioned. It is dangerous precisely because no one is protecting it, and attackers look for exactly these forgotten copies. DSPM finds them.
Yes. We discover and classify data across cloud platforms, SaaS, databases, and on-premise stores, so the inventory is complete rather than cloud-only. A risk that spans environments is still seen as one picture.
No. The output is a ranked view of real risk, not a raw dump. We prioritize by sensitivity, exposure, and reachability, so you get a short list of the data problems worth fixing first, with guidance, rather than an inventory too large to act on.
Shadow data is the point: discovery scans storage, databases, and SaaS for sensitive data outside governed stores, then maps each finding to an owner and a fix, in risk order.
No. Discovery reads metadata and samples content within agreed windows and rate limits. Production load is part of the scoping conversation, and originals are never modified.
Exposure is ranked by sensitivity and reachability, and the riskiest combinations, sensitive data plus broad access, get fixed first. The map refreshes continuously so it never goes stale.
Classification and access evidence map directly to GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS data handling requirements, produced from the live dataset rather than an annual survey.
By data estate size and connected platforms, starting with a fixed-scope discovery that gives you the first real map of where sensitive data lives.
Identify finds and classifies the data, Guard closes the exposure, and the posture trend reports through Enhance.
Find your data before an attacker does
Book a session with a Principal Engineer. We scan for where your sensitive data lives and show you what is exposed.