The unprecedented volumes of data being collected and processed present unparalleled streams of opportunities for businesses. At the same time, they pose similarly comprehensive challenges, the most critical of which has been and will continue to be securing this data. Moreover, with dramatic technological leaps being adopted by businesses, the sophistication of data threats has risen proportionately.
With traditional data security mechanisms and frameworks proving inefficient and incapable of adequately countering such threats, enterprises have turned towards Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solutions in their bid to ensure they have visibility of the threats they face and effective measures to mitigate them.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is one area where DSPM can improve overall performance in today’s data-driven environment.
Through effective integration of DSPM’s data-centric insights and solutions with PKI’s identity-encryption controls, organizations can leverage a unified approach that ensures an overall elevation of their enterprise security.
What are DSPM and PKI?
DSPM provides enterprises with continuous, real-time visibility into their entire data security posture. By leveraging DSPM’s core capabilities, enterprises can discover, classify, and categorize data across diverse environments, allowing for a complete overview of the organization’s data infrastructure and how it is being used. These insights can prove to be vital when conducting a comprehensive risk analysis for potential vulnerabilities and possible regulatory violations.
On the other hand, PKI is critical for an organization’s digital identity authentication and trust processes. It includes Certificate Authorities (CAs) responsible for issuing digital certificates that link identities to verifiable cryptographic key pairs. This, in turn, enables secure authentication and encryption of all incoming and outgoing data exchanges. In other words, with effective PKI, enterprises can ensure that only trusted users and devices with valid certificates have access rights to protected resources.
Why Integrate DSPM With PKI?
Enterprises have traditionally struggled with effectively encrypting their data - particularly in areas related to data encryption in multi-cloud environments.
Through the combination of DSPM’s data-centric visibility with PKI’s encryption and identity controls, enterprises can address the aforementioned gap. In effect, DSPM can pinpoint exactly where the sensitive information is located and when it is at risk, while PKI can offer immediate protection measures via encryption and ensuring only trusted identities have access rights to it.
Furthermore, triggers can be automated every time DSPM discovers new sensitive data so that PKI’s protective measures can take effect without manual intervention.
Through such a proposition, the DSPM-PKI integration goes beyond simply addressing the encryption gaps. It allows for adaptive security. Furthermore, this approach strengthens enterprises’ compliance efforts with regulatory obligations under GDPR, HIPAA, and other such laws and frameworks globally, such as ISO 27001.
Top 3 Practical Applications Of DSPM-PKI Integration
Here are three practical examples of how DSPM–PKI integration can be applied in real-world enterprise environments:
1. Secure Cloud Data Transfers
DSPM’s data mapping, categorization, and classification capabilities can be leveraged to label all sensitive data accordingly. These can then be used to automate the appropriate PKI-based protections, without the need for manual intervention or effort.
An example of this would be a confidential file in cloud storage. The PKI policies can be triggered for such a file, ensuring that it can only be downloaded or transmitted via an SSL / TLS connection using trusted certificates.
2. Hybrid Architecture Consistency
The DSPM-PKI integration allows for uniform security within hybrid infrastructures (on-premises and multi-cloud). PKI can enforce all relevant data management requirements for data identified as “sensitive.”
This can include any system accessing a “sensitive” on-premises file. The certificate must be valid and stay attached to the file even after it is transferred to cloud storage.
3. Third-Party Data Sharing
Arguably, the most important business value proposition of the DSPM-PKI integration is the end-to-end control it would provide. When sharing data with vendors, partners, or any other authorized third parties, DSPM can be leveraged to document and monitor which sensitive data assets are accessed, by whom, and when. Simultaneously, PKI would ensure that such data exchanges can only occur via authenticated and encrypted channels.
If any misuse or diversion from agreed protocols is detected, PKI can revoke the vendor’s certificate, eliminate their access instantaneously, and avoid any major incident involving sensitive data.
3 Common Challenges in DSPM–PKI Integration
Despite its benefits, DSPM–PKI integration comes with several critical technical and operational challenges.
1. Complexities Of Unified Integration
The DSPM-PKI integration involves merging two separate systems. Each of these systems uses different frameworks, terminologies, practices, and workflows. Such issues are further exacerbated in hybrid environments involving multi-cloud and on-premises data stores, which require different individual integration approaches or fully customized connectors.
Naturally, unifying these systems requires an extensive degree of mapping of how the features must be implemented in a manner that complements the other rather than hindering it.
Furthermore, policy differences or inconsistencies may continue to emerge in the aftermath of this integration. As mentioned before, DSPM and PKI are different systems. As with any project involving such complex integrations, opaque timelines, unforeseen implementation hurdles, and elevated costs are all to be expected.
However, it is important to consider these when planning to implement the DSPM-PKI integration, as failure to do so not only negates the efficiency of the exercise but can be detrimental to its results in the long-run.
2. Scalability and Performance
Due to the nature of these two systems, scalability will be a significant challenge in this integration. DSPM continuously generates real-time insights, alerts, and updates that can trigger automated responses from the PKI systems.
For enterprises that operate with large-scale infrastructures, frequent operations of this nature can potentially overwhelm either of the systems’ capabilities. In such an instance, performance will wither, along with potentially lengthy disruptions in operations.
Performance-related issues are likely to be more prevalent in distributed environments such as global enterprises with widespread IoT and edge devices or multi-cloud ecosystems. This can be due to a number of factors, such as geographic latency, inconsistent network performance, or fragmented PKI infrastructure, which would make instant responses to DSPM triggers highly challenging.
Hence, any DSPM-PKI integration must be scaled efficiently, with substantial investment in the necessary factors to ensure smooth operations and rigorous testing under realistic conditions to follow.
3. Operational Overhead
Operational complexity and the associated human resource issues pose another significant hurdle when implementing the DSPM-PKI integration. Enterprises adopting such an integration must ensure their security, IT, and compliance teams are adequately aware of and versed in the critical processes involved in both these systems’ operations.
Such a broad range of specialized skills may not be readily available in the existing teams, leading to potential skill gaps, which require investments in both training and external expertise to close.
Furthermore, the integration itself represents a major operational overhead due to the creation of new policies, workflows, and processes, which are separate but equally important, as each system’s individual policies, workflows, and processes.
Best Practices for Integrating DSPM and PKI
The following best practices can ensure enterprises maximize the benefits derived from DSPM-PKI integration:
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Integration With Cloud-Native Tools
DSPM tools must be tightly integrated to ensure timely PKI responses. PKI services such as AWS Certificate Manager or Google Cloud CAS offer APIs that streamline certificate issuance and revocation based on DSPM triggers.
Such an arrangement ensures that in every instance where new sensitive data assets are discovered or a risk is identified and flagged, the appropriate encryption protocols are put into place immediately.
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Established Frameworks
It is also essential to align the integration protocols and policies with the standardized security frameworks such as NIST and ISO 27001. These protocols emphasize the implementation of features such as data classification, principle of least privilege access (PoLP), encryption, and continuous monitoring.
Strict adherence to these protocols and frameworks as a whole ensures that all key aspects are covered and that any DSPM-PKI integration delivers the expected results while demonstrating compliance.
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Unified Policies & Monitoring
Laying down the rules and then enforcing them are two separate tasks. Hence, it is vital to establish entire workflows that ensure how tasks are to be automated, what instances trigger what responses, and how these workflows are to be monitored.
Additionally, both the DSPM and PKI systems must be configured to reflect such workflow protocols. Doing so makes both the enforcement and monitoring of the DSPM-PKI integration workflows easier.
Conclusion
Integrating DSPM with PKI allows an enterprise to leverage both data-centric and identity-centric defenses into one cohesive strategy. By adopting such an approach, enterprises can ensure their critical data assets are continuously monitored, securely encrypted, and accessible at all times only via verified identities.
Such a combination, if implemented both effectively and efficiently, strengthens the organization’s overall security posture while elevating their customers’ digital trust, all the while helping them stay a step ahead of immediate threats.
Note: This blog article was written by a guest contributor for the purpose of offering a wider variety of content for our readers. The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect those of GlobalSign.
