Shadow data and DSPM

Shadow data is sensitive information stored in cloud environments outside the scope of centralized IT or security controls. 

It often results from:

• Untracked data in development, staging or test environments
• Backups or copies created for analytics or machine learning
• Data left behind by decommissioned applications or projects
• Misconfigured SaaS integrations or third-party services

Shadow data may include regulated records like personally identifiable information (PII), personal health information (PHI) or financial data. This data typically doesn’t have proper access controls, encryption or monitoring, which makes it an attractive target for attackers and a liability during audits.

Shadow data can accumulate quickly, especially in organizations with decentralized development, rapid scaling or multiple cloud service providers. 

Because these data assets are often undocumented, security teams may not even know they exist, let alone the configuration or who can access them. Left unmonitored, shadow data is an invisible threat surface.

Modern cloud environments are dynamic and decentralized. Teams provision infrastructure on demand, integrate tools via APIs and move fast to support agile development. In this environment, data is easy to duplicate but hard to track.

Security teams struggle to keep up because:

Shadow data bypasses traditional data loss prevention (DLP) and supports cross-functional incident response and compliance readiness, giving teams shared visibility into hidden data risks.

The core principle of an effective exposure management program is to proactively identify, assess and reduce all forms of cyber risk across your entire attack surface. 

Shadow data represents a significant blind spot in this surface, and DSPM directly addresses it.

DSPM provides the granular visibility to understand where data resides and how identities, configurations and network paths combine to create exploitable attack paths. 

You move beyond simply knowing you have unmanaged data to understanding the critical impact that data could have if breached.

Integrating DSPM with your broader exposure management platform gives you a holistic risk view. You see how shadow data, unbeknownst to you, connects to over-privileged accounts or misconfigured cloud services. It allows you to prioritize remediation based on the likelihood and impact of an attack.

When you continuously monitor for new shadow data, you prevent it from expanding your attack surface. You shrink your exposure before attackers can exploit your hidden assets.

Data security posture management directly addresses the shadow data challenge by offering continuous discovery, classification, and exposure analysis.

Here’s how:

1. Discover and inventory unknown data

DSPM platforms scan cloud storage, databases, SaaS platforms and shadow infrastructure to find unmanaged or forgotten data assets, including

• S3 buckets, blob storage and unmanaged data lakes
• Unused database instances or test environments
• Cloud-native logs, reports and exports containing sensitive records

2. Classify data for risk and compliance

DSPM tools apply classification models to tag sensitive information according to compliance frameworks or custom data types like source code or IP.

3. Analyze exposure and toxic combinations

DSPM analyzes who or what can access data and whether infrastructure misconfigurations (e.g., public buckets, weak IAM roles) increase risk.

4. Prioritize what to fix first

Risk scores examine exposure severity, data sensitivity, exploitability and business context. They help you focus on what reduces risk, not just what’s noisy.

DSPM helps security teams focus on high-impact issues through risk scoring and exposure graphs. That might include shadow data exposed to the internet, overly-permissioned service accounts or unencrypted backups with sensitive data. 

5. Remediate and enforce policy

Leading DSPM solutions guide remediation and integrate with infrastructure-as-code (IaC), cloud infrastructure and entitlements management (CIEM) and cloud security posture management (CSPM) platforms to:

• Encrypt or delete unmanaged data
• Revoke unnecessary access
• Apply consistent controls across clouds

DSPM also prevents shadow data from emerging in the first place. 

Integrating with cloud provisioning workflows and policy-as-code tools automatically enforces guardrails, so new services inherit secure defaults and least-privilege access from day one.

• Shadow data discovery: Get a full, always-updated inventory of sensitive data, even if teams create it outside formal processes.
• Cloud breach prevention: Identify toxic combinations before attackers do and cut off attack paths to forgotten data assets.
• Compliance readiness: Meet auditor expectations for data governance and access control across multi-cloud environments.

Incident response: Reduce dwell time by ensuring responders know where sensitive data is and its exposures.

Tenable Cloud Security includes DSPM capabilities that continuously discover and classify cloud-based sensitive data. 

It enables:

• Automated detection of shadow data in AWS, Azure, GCP and SaaS environments
• Exposure analysis that maps access paths, roles and misconfigurations
• Guided remediation through integrations with CIEM, CSPM and IaC workflows

Tenable can help your organization reduce risk from unmanaged data, support least privilege and respond faster to potential exposure.

Learn how Tenable can help you find and fix risk from shadow data.