The Rise of Data and Identities The explosion of data across enterprises, coupled with the adoption of public cloud environments and AI-driven innovations, has dramatically increased the complexity of managing and securing access to sensitive data. Agile cloud delivery methodologies allow for faster development while (in many cases) driving more liberal entitlements granting. Nearly 99% of granted permissions are unused, and more than half of those permissions are high-risk. Controlling who accesses sensitive data—and from where—grows more complicated as enterprises onboard apps, move services to the cloud, and make progress along its digital transformation. The Risk of Overprivileged Access Overprivileged access occurs when users or systems are granted permissions exceeding their operational needs. While it may seem convenient, this practice introduces serious risks to data security and organizational compliance. Key risks include:Insider Threats: Excessive access may be misused intentionally or accidentally, exposing sensitive data that can further lead to data breaches or security incidents.Exploitation by bad actors: Attackers targeting overprivileged accounts can gain unauthorized control, move laterally and take over systems, network, data and deeper infrastructure to disrupt critical processes and interfere with essential business services escalating breaches. They can also bring operations to a halt resulting in prolonged downtime.Accidental Data Exposure: Users with excessive access may inadvertently access, modify, or share sensitive information, leading to reputational damage.Regulatory Non-Compliance: Overprivileged access to sensitive data increases the likelihood of failing audits or violating privacy standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or CCPA.Delayed investigation and incident response: Excessive permissions make it harder to trace incidents, complicating response times and recovery from security breaches.As per the study, in 2025, identity-related breaches are expected to continue as a major threat, with 80% of cyberattacks using identity-based methods and 99% of security decision-makers believing they will face an identity-related compromise within the year. As environments grow, so does the sheer volume of data, identities and permissions that makes it hard for the security teams to manage and visualize exactly Where is the sensitive data? Who can access the sensitive data?What are the identity risks associated with critical data? It’s difficult for security teams to get a complete picture of data, access and data usage across complex environment creating blind spots that threat actors or insiders may exploit. Traditional legacy methods are no longer enough to provide security teams with the kind of flexibility and coverage needed to effectively safeguard sensitive data against risk of data exposure and overly permissive user access controls that create significant vulnerabilities and make organizations prime targets for malicious actors or increase the risk of accidental data breaches. Leverage Modern Tools Like DSPMBusinesses need a strategy that unifies data discovery, access profiling, and risk remediation to address this problem. Enter data security posture management (DSPM). Rather than focusing on network perimeters or identity verification, DSPM puts the spotlight directly on sensitive data and who can access it. This data-centric approach represents a fundamental shift in security thinking by prioritizing your organization’s most valuable asset—the Data and the primary target for potential attackers. With DSPM, organizations can effectively address risk of data exposure and over-permissioned users.What DSPM DoesDSPM starts with answering the toughest question: what data we have, where is it located, who has access to it, which is at risk and which data needs protection for regulatory compliance? This is where building an inventory of all data and access across the enterprise comes into play. Data classification and inventory from a data access perspective enables security teams to understand data as well as who and what has access to the data. This enables teams to identify where data may be at risk based on the severity of access permissions and communicate to security teams where to focus. Here’s how it works:Data discovery, classification, and inventoryEffective data protection begins with knowing what sensitive information exists across your organization and where it’s stored. DSPM addresses this need by examining the entire data landscape to create a comprehensive understanding of data assets. DSPM solutions like Zscaler’s provide agentless, comprehensive data discovery. Then DSPM solution helps with precise AI powered classification of sensitive data such as PCI, PII, PHI, and create full inventory of data assets across a multicloud environment. DSPM help security teams in identifying sensitive data stores, critical to the organization, and focus on the business critical crown jewels rather than trying to protect the entire data estate. Fig: Zscaler DSPM dashboard Data access risk assessmentSecurity teams need to continuously monitor data environments to uncover and eliminate unnecessary access privileges by spotting overexposure violations. DSPM helps to map and track data access exposure risk. DSPM automated this flow by continuously tracking and analyzing resources identities and entitlements changes, determining all available permissions, and making these easily accessible. Using the data inventory graph and data access path that includes details of identity and access management (IAM) entities i.e. Who can access the data? what permissions do they have? what type of identity are they? what other risks are associated with this identity, and so on. Fig: Zscaler DSPM – Data inventory graphIt also helps to determine public exposure, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities for data stores and services. This plays a vital role in: 1. Accurate and actionable risk prioritization: Prioritization might be the biggest challenge in modern cloud security due to the thousands of data resources, services, and identities organizations could have in place. DSPM enables security teams to focus on combinations of risk factors such as identities, permissions, data exposure, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities that create dangerous openings for threat actors. It helps to prioritize risk with ML powered risk and threat correlation, determine hidden attack paths, reduce alert noise, and help the focus on risk that matters the most. 2. In-depth investigation: DSPM helps in investigating potential insider threats or potential data misuse incidents, highlight potential breach path allowing security teams to take appropriate remediation action. Data access risk managementDSPM streamlines risk management with context-based guided remediation, enabling security teams to easily fix issues and violations at the source. Security teams can address data exposure, misconfigurations, and security risk by leveraging step-by-step guidance with complete context. DSPM also allows security teams to configure near to real-time alerts on any misconfigurations and risky identities such as those with excessive or high privileges and provides remediation guidance to scope down permissions. This ensures all identities have least-privileged access and that the attack surface is minimized. Fig: Zscaler DSPM investigation Access governance and control policiesDSPM helps security teams to enforce granular access controls by evaluating each data view or modification request against zero trust principles. This prevents excessive or outdated privileges from persisting. Security teams can also define data access policies and it can ensure these policies are enforced. Compliance management and audit readinessDSPM eases the burden of compliance management by mapping data to applicable standards and enforcing necessary security measures from the outset. Many regulations and standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, require organizations to implement access controls that align with the principle of least privilege. Failing to align with regulations and standards can impact the organization’s credibility and attract penalties and fines down the line. DSPM automatically compares data security posture to compliance benchmarks and best practices. This helps assess gaps, prioritize remediation and track progress for different stakeholders, including executives, risk managers, and auditors while reducing manual effort and errors. Securing Data Access in AI modelsAccess to diverse, high-quality datasets is crucial for developing effective AI models. As AI models learn and adapt over time, maintaining consistent data access controls becomes more challenging. Security teams need to account for the context in which AI systems are used and their impact on sensitive data exposure, effective access, and regulatory compliance. Traditional techniques have proven insufficient to effectively manage these challenges. Fig: Zscaler DSPM – Securing AI modelsDSPM provides visibility into direct and indirect AI access to sensitive data and through which access paths. It helps ensure that sensitive data is only accessible to authorized personnel and that AI models are trained and operated on appropriate datasets. It also provides out-of-the-box policies that correlate the exposure of sensitive data. Zscaler DSPM: Build Robust Foundation for Data Access ManagementZscaler’s DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) effectively addresses overprivileged access by continuously monitoring access rights and ensuring adherence to least-privileged principles. It identifies unnecessary or excessive permissions, mitigates risks of unauthorized data exposure, and remediation processes, enabling organizations to tighten security while ensuring compliance across diverse data environments.Ready to experience how DSPM can transform your organization’s approach to data access? Request a custom demo today to see Zscaler DSPM in action.Sources:IBM, “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024,” February 26, 2025, https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breachCybersecurity Insiders, “2024 Insider Threat Report,” February 26, 2025, https://go1.gurucul.com/2024-insider-threat-reportITRC, “2023 Annual Data Breach Report,” February 27, 2025, https://www.idtheftcenter.org/publication/2023-data-breach-reportCDW, “2024 CDW Cybersecurity Report,” February 27, 2025, https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/services/amplified-services/security-services/2024-cdw-cybersecurity-report.htmlDark Reading, “80% of Firms Suffered Identity-Related Breaches in Last 12 Months,” June 22, 2022, https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/identity-related-breaches-last-12-months
[#item_full_content] The Rise of Data and Identities The explosion of data across enterprises, coupled with the adoption of public cloud environments and AI-driven innovations, has dramatically increased the complexity of managing and securing access to sensitive data. Agile cloud delivery methodologies allow for faster development while (in many cases) driving more liberal entitlements granting. Nearly 99% of granted permissions are unused, and more than half of those permissions are high-risk. Controlling who accesses sensitive data—and from where—grows more complicated as enterprises onboard apps, move services to the cloud, and make progress along its digital transformation. The Risk of Overprivileged Access Overprivileged access occurs when users or systems are granted permissions exceeding their operational needs. While it may seem convenient, this practice introduces serious risks to data security and organizational compliance. Key risks include:Insider Threats: Excessive access may be misused intentionally or accidentally, exposing sensitive data that can further lead to data breaches or security incidents.Exploitation by bad actors: Attackers targeting overprivileged accounts can gain unauthorized control, move laterally and take over systems, network, data and deeper infrastructure to disrupt critical processes and interfere with essential business services escalating breaches. They can also bring operations to a halt resulting in prolonged downtime.Accidental Data Exposure: Users with excessive access may inadvertently access, modify, or share sensitive information, leading to reputational damage.Regulatory Non-Compliance: Overprivileged access to sensitive data increases the likelihood of failing audits or violating privacy standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or CCPA.Delayed investigation and incident response: Excessive permissions make it harder to trace incidents, complicating response times and recovery from security breaches.As per the study, in 2025, identity-related breaches are expected to continue as a major threat, with 80% of cyberattacks using identity-based methods and 99% of security decision-makers believing they will face an identity-related compromise within the year. As environments grow, so does the sheer volume of data, identities and permissions that makes it hard for the security teams to manage and visualize exactly Where is the sensitive data? Who can access the sensitive data?What are the identity risks associated with critical data? It’s difficult for security teams to get a complete picture of data, access and data usage across complex environment creating blind spots that threat actors or insiders may exploit. Traditional legacy methods are no longer enough to provide security teams with the kind of flexibility and coverage needed to effectively safeguard sensitive data against risk of data exposure and overly permissive user access controls that create significant vulnerabilities and make organizations prime targets for malicious actors or increase the risk of accidental data breaches. Leverage Modern Tools Like DSPMBusinesses need a strategy that unifies data discovery, access profiling, and risk remediation to address this problem. Enter data security posture management (DSPM). Rather than focusing on network perimeters or identity verification, DSPM puts the spotlight directly on sensitive data and who can access it. This data-centric approach represents a fundamental shift in security thinking by prioritizing your organization’s most valuable asset—the Data and the primary target for potential attackers. With DSPM, organizations can effectively address risk of data exposure and over-permissioned users.What DSPM DoesDSPM starts with answering the toughest question: what data we have, where is it located, who has access to it, which is at risk and which data needs protection for regulatory compliance? This is where building an inventory of all data and access across the enterprise comes into play. Data classification and inventory from a data access perspective enables security teams to understand data as well as who and what has access to the data. This enables teams to identify where data may be at risk based on the severity of access permissions and communicate to security teams where to focus. Here’s how it works:Data discovery, classification, and inventoryEffective data protection begins with knowing what sensitive information exists across your organization and where it’s stored. DSPM addresses this need by examining the entire data landscape to create a comprehensive understanding of data assets. DSPM solutions like Zscaler’s provide agentless, comprehensive data discovery. Then DSPM solution helps with precise AI powered classification of sensitive data such as PCI, PII, PHI, and create full inventory of data assets across a multicloud environment. DSPM help security teams in identifying sensitive data stores, critical to the organization, and focus on the business critical crown jewels rather than trying to protect the entire data estate. Fig: Zscaler DSPM dashboard Data access risk assessmentSecurity teams need to continuously monitor data environments to uncover and eliminate unnecessary access privileges by spotting overexposure violations. DSPM helps to map and track data access exposure risk. DSPM automated this flow by continuously tracking and analyzing resources identities and entitlements changes, determining all available permissions, and making these easily accessible. Using the data inventory graph and data access path that includes details of identity and access management (IAM) entities i.e. Who can access the data? what permissions do they have? what type of identity are they? what other risks are associated with this identity, and so on. Fig: Zscaler DSPM – Data inventory graphIt also helps to determine public exposure, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities for data stores and services. This plays a vital role in: 1. Accurate and actionable risk prioritization: Prioritization might be the biggest challenge in modern cloud security due to the thousands of data resources, services, and identities organizations could have in place. DSPM enables security teams to focus on combinations of risk factors such as identities, permissions, data exposure, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities that create dangerous openings for threat actors. It helps to prioritize risk with ML powered risk and threat correlation, determine hidden attack paths, reduce alert noise, and help the focus on risk that matters the most. 2. In-depth investigation: DSPM helps in investigating potential insider threats or potential data misuse incidents, highlight potential breach path allowing security teams to take appropriate remediation action. Data access risk managementDSPM streamlines risk management with context-based guided remediation, enabling security teams to easily fix issues and violations at the source. Security teams can address data exposure, misconfigurations, and security risk by leveraging step-by-step guidance with complete context. DSPM also allows security teams to configure near to real-time alerts on any misconfigurations and risky identities such as those with excessive or high privileges and provides remediation guidance to scope down permissions. This ensures all identities have least-privileged access and that the attack surface is minimized. Fig: Zscaler DSPM investigation Access governance and control policiesDSPM helps security teams to enforce granular access controls by evaluating each data view or modification request against zero trust principles. This prevents excessive or outdated privileges from persisting. Security teams can also define data access policies and it can ensure these policies are enforced. Compliance management and audit readinessDSPM eases the burden of compliance management by mapping data to applicable standards and enforcing necessary security measures from the outset. Many regulations and standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, require organizations to implement access controls that align with the principle of least privilege. Failing to align with regulations and standards can impact the organization’s credibility and attract penalties and fines down the line. DSPM automatically compares data security posture to compliance benchmarks and best practices. This helps assess gaps, prioritize remediation and track progress for different stakeholders, including executives, risk managers, and auditors while reducing manual effort and errors. Securing Data Access in AI modelsAccess to diverse, high-quality datasets is crucial for developing effective AI models. As AI models learn and adapt over time, maintaining consistent data access controls becomes more challenging. Security teams need to account for the context in which AI systems are used and their impact on sensitive data exposure, effective access, and regulatory compliance. Traditional techniques have proven insufficient to effectively manage these challenges. Fig: Zscaler DSPM – Securing AI modelsDSPM provides visibility into direct and indirect AI access to sensitive data and through which access paths. It helps ensure that sensitive data is only accessible to authorized personnel and that AI models are trained and operated on appropriate datasets. It also provides out-of-the-box policies that correlate the exposure of sensitive data. Zscaler DSPM: Build Robust Foundation for Data Access ManagementZscaler’s DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) effectively addresses overprivileged access by continuously monitoring access rights and ensuring adherence to least-privileged principles. It identifies unnecessary or excessive permissions, mitigates risks of unauthorized data exposure, and remediation processes, enabling organizations to tighten security while ensuring compliance across diverse data environments.Ready to experience how DSPM can transform your organization’s approach to data access? Request a custom demo today to see Zscaler DSPM in action.Sources:IBM, “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024,” February 26, 2025, https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breachCybersecurity Insiders, “2024 Insider Threat Report,” February 26, 2025, https://go1.gurucul.com/2024-insider-threat-reportITRC, “2023 Annual Data Breach Report,” February 27, 2025, https://www.idtheftcenter.org/publication/2023-data-breach-reportCDW, “2024 CDW Cybersecurity Report,” February 27, 2025, https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/services/amplified-services/security-services/2024-cdw-cybersecurity-report.htmlDark Reading, “80% of Firms Suffered Identity-Related Breaches in Last 12 Months,” June 22, 2022, https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/identity-related-breaches-last-12-months
