Ten Super Useful Data Security Tools, Which One Have You Used? (Download link attached)

2024.09.07

With the rapid development of the digital age, data has become one of the most valuable assets of enterprises. However, the rapid growth of data and the diversified storage methods have also brought unprecedented security challenges. Problems such as data leakage, hacker attacks and internal threats are becoming increasingly serious. How can we effectively ensure the security of data assets and prevent data leakage, tampering and illegal access while enjoying the dividends of technology?

In this context, data security situation management (DSPM) tools came into being and became an "important weapon" for protecting data assets and maintaining business continuity.

The core function of DSPM tools is to monitor, analyze and respond to data security incidents in real time, helping enterprises build a comprehensive and dynamic security protection system. By integrating advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies, these tools can predict potential security threats and detect abnormal behaviors in a timely manner, so as to take preventive measures before data security incidents occur.

In this article, we have reviewed the ten most representative data security situation management (DSPM) tools and summarized their corresponding functions and advantages to help everyone fully understand the potential and applicable scenarios of these tools.

Sentra

Sentra mainly provides enterprises with a series of functions related to discovering, classifying, monitoring and protecting their data; it can automatically discover, classify and monitor data transmitted in cloud environments. Specifically, it has the following functions:

  • Machine learning and metadata clustering: Use these technologies to detect misconfigurations, compliance violations, encryption types, etc.
  • Agentless tool with pure API approach: This means it can quickly connect to multi-cloud environments without disrupting the performance of workloads on the cloud;
  • Transparency and visibility into data security: Sentra provides visibility into how data flows across cloud environments, helping enterprises better understand and manage their data security posture;
  • Security policy customization: Enterprises can customize security policies based on their own security needs and compliance requirements;
  • Integration into security automation platforms: Sentra can be seamlessly integrated into existing security automation platforms to improve the enterprise’s ability to respond to data security incidents;
  • Support for multi-cloud environments: Sentra supports mainstream cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, GCP, etc., helping enterprises to uniformly manage data security in multi-cloud environments;
  • Data detection and response tools: Sentra provides near real-time data detection and response tools to help enterprises detect and respond to data security threats in a timely manner;
  • Dashboards and Reports: Sentra provides a series of actionable dashboards and reports to help enterprises monitor data security posture and generate necessary compliance reports;

As a DSPM tool, Sentra is designed to help enterprises effectively manage and protect their data assets in complex cloud environments. Through automation and integration, Sentra aims to simplify data security workflows and improve data security and compliance.

Portal: https://www.sentra.io/

Flow Security

Flow Security can automatically verify and enforce existing security policies, helping developers and data analysts ensure that data is properly protected while using it, achieving a balance between data use and protection, and helping enterprise organizations protect their application systems from various security threats. Its main functions are as follows:

  • Data discovery and classification: Flow Security automatically discovers all data within an organization, including sensitive data and shadow data, and classifies the data for better management and protection.
  • Risk assessment and prioritization: This tool can assess the risk of data leakage and determine the risk level of security risks based on the amount of data, exposure and security posture, helping security teams prioritize the most pressing security issues;
  • Security protection and monitoring: Flow Security provides security protection measures such as encryption and access control, and monitors data usage and access to promptly detect and respond to security incidents;

Flow Security helps enterprises comply with existing regulatory requirements such as PCI, GDPR and CCPA by identifying and remediating any violations of data security management requirements, streamlining outdated data and reducing data risks.

Portal: https://www.flowsecurity.com/

Concentric Semantic Intelligence

Concentric Semantic Intelligence combines DSPM with threat detection, integrates various security tools, covers unstructured and structured data, and provides in-depth coverage of AWS service data. It uses deep learning and natural language processing technology to provide enterprises with fully automated data security management.

Key capabilities of Concentric Semantic Intelligence include:

  • Semantic understanding and data discovery: Through deep learning technology, the system can understand the meaning and context of data and classify it;
  • Analysis and risk identification: The system can analyze data sharing and access and identify potential risks;
  • Data classification and labeling: Supports custom data classification and labeling, and automates the identification and protection of sensitive data;
  • Integration with existing classification systems: Ability to integrate with third-party classification systems such as Microsoft Information Protection and Google;
  • Data view and access risk investigation: Provide data view to help users understand data location and access risks 
  • Monitoring and automated repair: Continuously monitor data security status and automatically repair potential data leakage issues 
  • Automated Security Policy and Policy Exchange Marketplace: Users can share and access risk-related policies and tools 

The Concentric Semantic Intelligence tool provides enterprises with efficient, accurate and adaptable data security solutions through its fully automated data management process, intelligent analysis capabilities driven by deep learning and natural language processing technologies, flexible system integration compatibility, policy-oriented approach focused on risk identification and data protection, and sharing of industry best practices promoted through the policy exchange market.

Portal: https://concentric.ai/

Polar

Polar is a data security situation management tool designed specifically to help professionals working in data security, compliance, and governance. It can effectively map large amounts of chaotic and difficult-to-manage data on different cloud platforms and classify them into risk categories such as advanced, common, and potential. It can also provide companies with advice on how to mitigate various data security risks in the future. Its main features include:

  • Data discovery: Polar can scan a company’s entire cloud infrastructure, including S3 buckets, log files, and shadow data, to determine where data is located.
  • Data classification: Identify sensitive data in these locations based on definitions under data protection regulations, such as personally identifiable information (PII) as defined by GDPR and financial data as defined by the Payment Card Industry (PCI);
  • Data flow mapping: Polar first discovers the location of existing data and then locates potential data flows. It then maps the actual data flows so we can see which employee accessed which data store (that we don’t even know about) and downloaded sensitive data from it;

Polar is becoming a powerful tool for enterprise data security management through its powerful data discovery, classification, and stream mapping capabilities, as well as its advantages in automation and cloud-native support.

Portal: https://www.polar.security/

Cyera

Cyera is a tool focused on data security situation management, which aims to help enterprises gain in-depth understanding of the security status of their data assets and take appropriate protective measures by providing comprehensive data security visibility. The main functions include:

  • Sensitive data identification: Cyera can scan data in local files and cloud environments to achieve visibility of all enterprise data assets, including shadow data. It can also help enterprises identify misplaced data, misconfigured data assets, and overly loose access permissions, thereby identifying exposed sensitive data;
  • Priority assessment: Determine the risk level of security risks based on data volume, exposure, and security posture;
  • Security protection: Provides a series of actionable dashboards to help security teams monitor and manage data security incidents;
  • Monitoring: Continuously monitor the data environment to detect and respond to security threats in a timely manner;

Cyera has extensive application value in data asset identification, sensitive data identification and protection, compliance monitoring, and the balance between data utilization and protection in multi-cloud environments.

Portal: https://www.cyera.io/

Securiti

Sentra is an excellent data security situation management tool that can be integrated with current mainstream cloud data security solutions. Sentra has a cloud-native data classification system. This means that when the company's data is transmitted in the cloud environment, the tool automatically discovers, classifies and monitors the data. It can also use machine learning and metadata clusters to detect misconfigurations, compliance violations, encryption types and other information. The main features include:

  • Can work across clouds, SaaS, and IaaS;
  • can provide prioritization and remediation strategies;
  • Centralized dashboard for monitoring and controlling data assets;
  • Customizable alert modes;
  • Integrate hundreds of built-in plugins that comply with privacy regulations;

Securiti is a popular DSPM tool that has been recognized by professional organizations such as Forbes and Gartner. The tool can proactively control various complex security, privacy and compliance risks, enabling enterprises to safely maximize the value of data and cloud.

Portal: https://securiti.ai/

Laminar

Laminar focuses on cloud data security and provides comprehensive data leakage protection for everything an enterprise builds and runs in the cloud. It can be used to analyze, classify, and eliminate risks for various types of data. Specifically, its main functions are as follows:

  • Automated and continuous discovery of local and cloud data;
  • Detect sensitive data in managed assets, shadow systems, and embedded virtual instances;
  • Data-centric risk models;
  • Provide specific risk improvement recommendations;
  • Provide 360-degree data access monitoring;

It is worth noting that Laminar uses agentless and asynchronous monitoring technology to monitor everything running in a public cloud account, including data storage, computing, and data egress channels. This monitoring method allows approved data movement and issues timely alerts when problems occur, which can effectively reduce the attack surface.

In addition, in terms of data protection and compliance, Laminar can help companies meet various industry standards and regulatory requirements, such as PCI, GDPR and CCPA, which helps companies reduce the financial and reputation losses faced by companies due to violations.

Portal: https://laminarsecurity.com/

Normalyze

Normalyze can scan cloud and local data sources and automatically fix configuration errors when they are identified. It integrates with SOAR, third-party work orders, notifications, and automation platforms out of the box, such as ServiceNow, Slack, Jira, etc. Specific features are as follows:

  • Cloud and local data source scanning: Normalyze can scan cloud and local data sources to provide comprehensive data visibility. This helps organizations understand the storage location, type and usage of data, providing a basis for subsequent data classification and protection.
  • Automatically fix configuration errors: During the scanning process, Normalyze can identify configuration errors and automatically fix them. This reduces data security risks caused by improper configuration and improves the stability of the data environment.
  • Integration and Automation: Normalyze integrates out of the box with a variety of third-party ticket, notification, and automation platforms, such as ServiceNow, Slack, Jira, etc. This integration capability enables Normalyze to seamlessly integrate into the organization's existing IT environment, improving work efficiency and responsiveness.
  • Sensitive data classification: Comprehensive data classification based on sensitive content is one of the core functions of Normalyze. Through detailed classification of data, organizations can prioritize and protect important data content and reduce the risk of data leakage.
  • Continuous monitoring and alerts: Normalyze not only provides one-time data scanning services, but also continuously monitors changes in the data environment. Once potential security risks or signs of data leakage are found, Normalyze will immediately issue an alert to help organizations respond and take measures in a timely manner.
  • Compliance support: As data protection regulations continue to improve, compliance has become an important issue that organizations must face. Normalyze helps organizations meet the requirements of various data protection regulations and reduce compliance risks by providing comprehensive data visibility and security solutions.

Portal: https://normalyze.ai/

Varonis

Varonis integrates hundreds of data security threat response use cases, and can build a single data priority risk view for enterprises, helping them proactively and systematically eliminate data risks brought by internal data security threats and cyber attacks. Specifically, it has the following main functions:

  • Comprehensive data discovery: Varonis can fully discover all data assets within an organization, including structured data, unstructured data, and various shadow IT systems. It uses advanced scanning and indexing technology to ensure the comprehensiveness and accuracy of data.
  • Intelligent Data Classification: Based on machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, Varonis can intelligently classify data and identify sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), payment card information (PCI), etc. This intelligent classification function helps organizations prioritize the protection of important data content.
  • Continuous monitoring and alerts: Varonis provides continuous data monitoring capabilities that can track data usage and access rights in real time. Once abnormal access or potential data leakage risks are detected, it will immediately issue an alert and provide detailed reports for the organization's reference.
  • Permission management and access control: In addition to monitoring capabilities, Varonis also provides permission management and access control capabilities. It can help organizations optimize data access permission settings to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data. At the same time, it can also provide detailed permission audit reports to help organizations understand data access.
  • Compliance support: With the continuous improvement of data protection regulations, compliance has become an important issue that organizations must face. Varonis can support the requirements of various data protection regulations, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, etc. It provides compliance reporting and auditing functions to help organizations reduce compliance risks.
  • Integration and Automation: Varonis can integrate with a variety of third-party security tools and services, such as SIEM, SOAR, firewalls, etc. This integration capability enables Varonis to seamlessly integrate into the organization's existing IT environment, improving work efficiency and response speed. At the same time, it also supports automated workflows and script execution functions to further reduce the risks and costs of manual operations.

Portal: https://www.varonis.com/?hsLang=en

Wiz

Wiz helps enterprises maintain data security continuously and easily integrate with third-party services. It can scan every layer of the cloud environment without agents to provide complete visibility of data on the cloud. It can connect to mainstream cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Alibaba Cloud, etc. through APIs, and is compatible with virtual machines, containers, and serverless storage modes. Specifically, the main functions are as follows:

  • Providing security visibility across cloud environments: As an innovator in the field of cloud-native security, Wiz provides a new CNAPP solution that combines the advantages of multiple cloud security technologies; at the same time, it provides security visibility across cloud environments, covering the entire multi-cloud environment, and identifying, correlating and prioritizing risks at all layers.
  • Data monitoring and real-time alarm: Wiz provides continuous data monitoring and real-time alarm functions, which can respond to security incidents in real time and reduce losses.
  • Support private deployment solutions: Wiz provides both SaaS services and private deployment solutions to meet the needs of different enterprises.

Currently, Wiz has added a lightweight agent called Runtime Sensor for detection and response. In addition to common cloud data sources, it can scan various local databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and their cloud versions, and integrate with more than 60 different security products. But only the advanced licensing plan can enjoy the full DSPM feature set.

Portal: https://www.wiz.io/

References:

  • https://www.51cto.com/article/748323.html
  • https://www.secrss.com/articles/65011