Data compliance and audit readiness with DSPM

Cloud platforms offer unprecedented agility and introduce significant risks regarding regulatory compliance and audit readiness. 

As sensitive data spreads across multi-cloud environments, security teams often struggle to answer the most basic audit questions: Where is our data? Who can access it? Is it properly secured?

Data security posture management (DSPM) closes this gap by providing continuous visibility into where sensitive data lives, how it flows and its exposures. By aligning your cloud security program with compliance frameworks, DSPM gives you the control, evidence and automation your organization needs to pass audits and demonstrate compliance.

Compliance tools like cloud access security brokers (CASB) and data loss prevention (DLP) are often perimeter-focused, require endpoint agents or depend on predefined data flows that don't reflect today’s cloud-native reality. 

They can’t see:

• Shadow databases in unmanaged cloud accounts
• Data moving between SaaS, cloud storage and workloads
• Over-permissioned users with access to sensitive resources

As a result, audits are manual, reactive and stressful. Security teams scramble to assemble data maps, access reviews and evidence, often after an incident or just before a regulatory deadline.

A DSPM solution gives you continuous, automated visibility that supports internal policy enforcement and external regulatory compliance. 

Key capabilities include:

1. Sensitive data discovery and classification

DSPM platforms scan structured and unstructured data across AWS, Azure, GCP and SaaS services. They auto-classify:

• Regulated data, like personally identifiable information (PII)
• Custom-sensitive data, like financials or IP
• Shadow data, including backups, logs or stale datasets

DSPM helps you maintain an up-to-date data inventory, a core requirement for most compliance frameworks.

Ultimately, this visibility empowers your broader exposure management program. You can identify and prioritize data risks as part of a comprehensive strategy to shrink your attack surface.

2. Access governance and entitlements analysis

DSPM evaluates who or what can access sensitive data and access justification. This supports:

Least privilege enforcement

Detection of toxic combinations (e.g., public S3 buckets + sensitive data)

Continuous identity and access monitoring (cloud infrastructure and entitlements management (CIEM) alignment)

This data lets you create reports when auditors ask for them and stop problems before they become policy violations.

3. Misconfiguration and exposure detection

DSPM tools catch configuration mistakes that expose sensitive data or create weak spots where data could get compromised. 

Common examples:

• Public buckets containing sensitive data
• Open ports providing unauthorized access to data stores
• Unencrypted databases
• Disabled logging on data access

Exposing regulated data through these flaws can trigger fines under many regulations.

DSPM helps you find and fix these before auditors or attackers do. 

4. Mapping to compliance controls

Some DSPM platforms connect their findings straight to compliance frameworks so you spend less time prepping for audits and can show auditors actual evidence instead of just documentation.

5. Automated reporting and audit readiness

DSPM helps you pull together what auditors need:

• Data inventory and classification showing what you have right now
• Identity access reviews tracking who can see what
• Remediation history and policy tracking proving you fixed things and are compliant
• System and data change logs documenting what changed and when

This covers both internal governance requirements and what external auditors ask for. It directly supports your exposure management journey. You get the evidence you need to show you are actively reducing your data attack surface and protecting critical information.

DSPM gives you the control, evidence and automation your organization needs to pass audits and demonstrate compliance. 

Learn how Tenable supports least privilege enforcement and helps uncover shadow data across your cloud environment.

Instead of scrambling for audit prep, DSPM gives you live data posture insights your teams can continuously review. DSPM supports recurring access reviews, audit trail maintenance and continuous assurance to stay ready for audits year-round without all that manual effort.

Cloud compliance is about reducing real risk. While each overseeing agency has its guidelines, compliance regulations often require your organization to:

• Prove you know where you’ve stored sensitive data
• Limit access to only those who need it
• Demonstrate how you’re protecting data from exposure or misuse

DSPM helps fulfill these requirements with dynamic visibility and actionable controls. It helps you to demonstrate intent, show corrective action and move toward zero trust around data access.

With DSPM integrated into cloud pipelines, your security and DevOps teams can enforce compliance by design, embedding data classification, policy enforcement and access reviews into infrastructure as code (IaC) and CI/CD flows.

Tenable Cloud Security DSPM features help you:

• Find and tag sensitive data wherever it sits in your cloud environment
• Spot config problems that put your data at risk
• Match findings to compliance requirements like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI
• Pull together documentation that auditors want to see

With Tenable CSPM, CIEM and vulnerability management capabilities, DSPM gives you the context and automation your organization needs to reduce data exposure risk and streamline compliance workflows.

See how Tenable Cloud Security can help you quickly automate and streamline cloud data compliance.