Dig Data Security vs CSPM Vendors: 6 Key Differences

Closing the gap on cloud data security is a top priority for today’s enterprises. To answer this need, data security posture management (DSPM) has emerged as one of the most in-demand categories in cybersecurity. In addition to the startups operating in this space, several established CSPM vendors have rushed data discovery and classification features to market in 2023.

These solutions are better than nothing, but they are unlikely to meet the full requirements of a data security team – which can result in an unacceptably high risk profile for sensitive data, which is often an organization’s most prized asset (and primary target for attacks). 

Before deciding on a data security tool, ask yourself these six questions:

1. Who is it built for?

CSPM is built for DevSecOps. Dig is built for data security and compliance teams. This manifests in product functionality, the ‘language’ the product speaks, and the companies’ areas of expertise when it comes to threat modeling and ongoing support.

Why you should care: 

Dig surfaces the specific, context-enriched insights that data security teams need to prevent data leaks and compliance violations; whereas CSPM platforms send hundreds of different alerts for resource misconfigurations. These could be of interest to DevOps and DevSecOps teams; but for data security, it’s notification noise that can obscure critical incidents. 

2. What is the product built to solve?

CSPM starts with the vulnerability. Dig’s DSPM starts with the data. CSPM tools monitor cloud infrastructure and resources, and only consider the data in that context. Dig finds the sensitive data in any cloud asset, and identifies risks that go beyond misconfigurations.

Why you should care: 

• Enterprise data is not yet-another cloud resource. It has unique access, storage, and movement patterns. 
• Dig takes data context, lineage, and flow into account, and provides faster insight into incidents that pose a security or compliance risk – such as PII copied between production and development environments.

3. Do you need a feature or a platform?

CSPM tools treat data security as a feature. Dig offers a complete platform. CSPM developers cannot give the same level of attention to data security, simply because it is one of dozens of features their products aim to provide. Dig’s R&D is focused entirely on improving customers’ data security.

Why you should care: CSPM solutions are often ‘close enough’ when it comes to data security features, but that’s not always good enough for data-intensive organizations:

• CSPM tools focus on risk patterns but lack important data context is key to understanding which risks to prioritize - e.g., there is a difference between employee and customer records.
• Limited classifiers: Popular CSPM tools offer only a few dozen classifiers out of the box, while Dig offers >150.
• Limited scope: CSPM tools are focused on publicly accessible data. Dig covers data risk analysis, data flow monitoring, privacy and compliance, and data detection and response.

4. Where is your data stored?

CSPM tools cover public clouds; Dig covers everywhere your data is stored including CSPs, SaaS and DBaaS: While popular CSPM tools only cover cloud storage (S3, Blob, etc.), Dig covers DBaaS such as Snowflake, and SaaS applications such as Office 365 or Salesforce.

Why you should care: Today’s enterprises store data in more than just buckets and hosted databases. Managed services are playing an increasing role in the modern data stack, and your security tooling should keep pace.

5. What’s an acceptable MTTD for data incidents?

Dig is the only cloud security tool that provides cloud DLP capabilities including real-time data detection and response. Dig can detect an incident such as a mass download of a PII-containing database within minutes; other tools would rely on daily or hourly scans.

Why you should care: Every minute matters during an exfiltration event. Early detection helps remediate incidents earlier, limit their damage, and effectively investigate the vulnerabilities that cause them.

6. Will data leave your cloud account?

Some CSPM tools send data to the vendor’s cloud for scanning or classification purposes. Dig operates entirely in your account. Dig deploys its Orchestrator in your environment; only metadata and alerts are sent to the Dig SaaS portal.

Why you should care: Even if you trust your vendors completely, sensitive data leaving your environment is another security and compliance headache that you need to deal with.

And there’s so much more that Dig can do…

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Still not sure if Dig Security can help you? Get in touch for a free risk assessment to find out whether your data is secure and compliant, and learn how Dig could help you prioritize and remediate your most important data risks.