GigaOm Radar for Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)v2.0

1. Executive Summary

Data is core to all organizations, serving as a critical business asset that drives decision making. The importance of data has intensified in recent years, fueled by the race to adopt AI solutions—not just enterprise AI, but also the increasingly widespread use of enterprise generative AI tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot portfolio. As organizations integrate these tools, they must ensure their data is not only relevant, but secured and compliant with regulatory demands. This must be achieved amid increasingly complex data environments, where storage is no longer limited to on-premises systems but now spans multiple cloud repositories and data platforms. This complexity, alongside new AI initiatives, presents a significant risk to data security and privacy—risks that can’t go unchecked. A data breach can have severe technical, financial, and reputational consequences for any organization.

The risks to an organization’s data are continually evolving. The move to the cloud has introduced new threats, such as cloud misconfigurations—where improperly secured storage or services can expose sensitive data. It has also amplified the risks of cloud misconfigurations—where improperly secured storage or services can expose sensitive data—and has amplified the risks of “shadow” data that is created outside an organization’s normal IT and security controls, often leaving it unprotected. Moreover, public AI tools pose a risk where users might inadvertently expose sensitive data and intellectual property to public training models, while enterprise AI tools may be learning from outdated, irrelevant, or unsecured data, leaving sensitive information exposed across organizations. Add to this ongoing security threats and stringent compliance requirements organizations must meet, and it becomes clear that organizations need a solution to tackle these challenges.

This is where data security posture management (DSPM) solutions come into play, providing organizations with the visibility they need across multiple data platform types, both in the cloud and on-premises. Often cloud-based, DSPM solutions can easily integrate with a wide range of data repositories. They can often automatically find data repositories and build a data map. By analyzing data movement and lineage, DSPM solutions identify how data flows through an organization and where risks may emerge. They can also discover shadow data stores, analyze their contents, and provide a clear picture of the organization’s data estate, compliance status, and security position. Once deployed, DSPM solutions should continuously monitor security posture, offer guidance on access controls, understand user behavior to quickly identify threats, and enable rapid threat mitigation.

Organizations depend on their data, and as demands for data-driven insights grow, including in areas such as analytics and AI, diligent IT leaders cannot allow potential threats to remain undetected and unchecked. DSPM is emerging as one of the most effective ways to address these challenges, making it a critical consideration for modern data security leaders.

This is our second year evaluating the DSPM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 13 of the top DSPM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading DSPM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.