• The explosion of SaaS, cloud infrastructure, and AI tools has created massive "shadow data" risks that traditional perimeter security can no longer track or protect.
• Symantec® DSPM enhances our data security platform by providing complete visibility and insights into data across your organization.
• Symantec DSPM and DLP enable organizations by unifying data discovery and DLP enforcement into a single-pass engine, enabling security teams to both understand and protect sensitive data without added complexity.

Between multi-cloud adoption, SaaS sprawl, and the rapid deployment of AI, sensitive data is moving faster than security teams can track it. Data is no longer confined. Now it lives across SaaS applications, hybrid cloud environments, endpoint devices, and a number of growing AI tools—sanctioned and unsanctioned. As organizations race to understand this expanding data landscape, data security posture management (DSPM) has rapidly emerged as one of cybersecurity's fastest-growing categories.

Organizations across every sector are exploring DSPM as they adopt more data-centric security strategies, with Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI), Technology and eCommerce sectors leading the way. 

About 65% of DSPM market growth in 2024 was driven by the urgency to protect data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. And for good reason. DSPM enables deep visibility into an organization’s data estate. Unless an organization has visibility, how will they know what needs to be protected?

DSPM arrived with a bang

When we look at the market analyst reports, DSPM is forecasted to massively change the data security market. The DSPM market is expected to grow at a 37.4% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2025 to 2029 as more organizations opt for a DSPM solution as a part of their data security plan. 

And the supply is growing to keep up with demand. Vendors are entering this product category following a chorus of security practitioners lauding DSPM as the future of data security. This shift has also been recognized by analysts, who are now conducting Data Security Waves with DSPM as a key data point to compare and rank vendors. And as we know, these analyst reports and rankings are important data points when considering purchasing a solution.

But today’s market often forces security leaders to choose between two incomplete approaches to data visibility: visibility without enforcement (i.e., point products that can map out sensitive data but doesn’t give you the tools to protect it) or siloed infrastructure suites (i.e., large platform suites that promise end-to-end coverage but create a configuration and management nightmare). 

Then there’s the catch: DSPM alone isn’t truly positioned to replace DLP. Understanding your data risk without the ability to tie it seamlessly to enforcement is a liability. Context without control provides a clearer view of risk, but not necessarily a way to reduce it.

Where Symantec DSPM comes in

This is where Symantec takes a different approach. 

Symantec DSPM, the latest addition to the CloudSOC Data Security Platform (DSP), enables you to better understand your organization's data and identify risk with deeper visibility and insights. That includes knowing what data you have, how critical it is, and whether it’s protected, redundant or actively accessed—all while putting measures in place to protect it with the help of Symantec DLP. 

Symantec DSPM gives organizations visibility and insights into the data across SaaS, IaaS applications, and endpoint devices. Through a centralized dashboard, users gain a bird’s eye view of all of the data in their environment alongside a detailed catalog of their data. 

Data discovery and classification are the two pillars of a DSPM solution. And with our Symantec DSPM solution as well, we are using Symantec’s enterprise-grade detection techniques for data discovery and classification to give organizations valuable context into file disposition, as well as actionable insights to guide analysts on where to focus attention first. 

Here's what you can do with Symantec DSPM:

• Manage everything from one place. Symantec DSPM is managed through the Symantec CloudSOC management consoles—the same one used for Symantec DLP Cloud, giving admins a consistent experience across both solutions. We have kept management simple and easy to configure without performance overhead.
• Prioritize the risks that matter most. Gain total visibility into your data estate, reduce compliance gaps and identify the actions you need most for better protection of your sensitive data. 
• Build on your existing investments. Existing Symantec DLP Cloud customers can extend their deployments with DSPM by leveraging familiar configurations and shared components, making it easy to expand into a unified data security platform. 
• Get up and running fast. Deploy DSPM with just a few steps with multiple out-of-the-box configurations intentionally designed to simplify onboarding and accelerate time to value. 
• Unify discovery and protection. Powered by the same industry-renowned detection engine as Symantec DLP Cloud, Symantec DSPM uses a shared policy framework, enabling data scanning in a single pass (goodbye, complexity). 

This solution is available to net new customers as well as existing Symantec DLP customers. 

Data security built for tomorrow 

Organizations need a unified approach that delivers both understanding and protection, without creating a complex configuration nightmare. 

Launched in May 2026 and specializing in data visibility as the key use case, Symantec DSPM bridges this gap. It offers the capability to provide complete visibility into your orgs, and with Symantec DLP, unifies discovery and enforcement into a single-pass engine, security teams get a more cohesive approach to data security. Simple, out-of-the-box configurations make deployment a breeze, saving you time while still delivering the deep visibility your organization needs to keep up with today’s AI-driven data growth—built directly onto the tried, trusted and true protection capabilities that have defined Symantec DLP for years. 

Read the solution brief or the public documentation to discover how Symantec DSPM and Symantec DLP Cloud work together to help you understand, prioritize, and protect your most sensitive data. Better yet, see it in action in a personalized demo.

More on DSPM and data security

What is DSPM?

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) helps organizations understand their data by identifying where it lives, how sensitive it is, who has access to it, and where its at risk. Unlike traditional security approaches that focus primarily on enforcement, DSPM focuses on visibility and context.  

How do DSPM and DLP work together?

Data visibility gives security teams context to identify and prioritize risk, while DLP provides the controls to protect sensitive data. When DSPM and DLP share an architecture and policy framework, organizations can more easily turn insights into action across SaaS applications, cloud services, endpoints, and AI tools.

What should organizations look for in a DSPM solution?

Organizations should look for a solution that delivers comprehensive data discovery, meaningful risk insights, and a clear path from visibility to protection. Symantec DSPM, together with Symantec DLP Cloud, uses a shared architecture to unify data discovery and DLP enforcement, giving security teams broad visibility and protection through a consistent management experience.

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