Complete Your DSPM Strategy With Automated Policy Enforcement for Data in Motion
Organizations are pouring money into Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solutions—and for good reason. Knowing where your sensitive data lives is foundational to protecting it. But here’s the problem that keeps security leaders up at night: DSPM tells you where data is, not what happens when it leaves.
This post examines the critical gap between data discovery and data protection, why that gap represents significant risk exposure, and how automated policy enforcement for data in motion transforms your DSPM investment from an expensive inventory system into a complete data security strategy.
Executive Summary
Main Idea: DSPM solutions excel at discovering and classifying sensitive data at rest, but they lack enforcement capabilities when that data moves outside your organization. Automated policy enforcement for data in motion closes this gap by ensuring DSPM classifications trigger real-time protection whenever sensitive data is shared externally—through secure email, file transfers, APIs, or third-party collaboration.
Why You Should Care: According to Frost & Sullivan, 40% of breaches now involve data stored across multiple environments. Meanwhile, research from Secureframe shows 61% of organizations experienced third-party data breaches in the last 12 months alone. Your DSPM solution can classify a document as “Confidential” all day long, but that classification becomes meaningless the moment someone emails it to a vendor without enforcement in place. The investment you’ve made in discovery is only as valuable as your ability to act on what you’ve discovered.
You Trust Your Organization is Secure. But Can You Verify It?
Key Takeaways
- DSPM provides visibility, not protection. Discovery and data classification are essential first steps, but DSPM tools stop at your network edge. When sensitive data moves externally, classifications don’t follow without an enforcement layer.
- Third-party sharing is your highest-risk blind spot. With 61% of organizations experiencing third-party breaches last year and supply chain attacks taking 267 days to contain, external collaboration represents the most dangerous gap in most data security strategies.
- Shadow AI amplifies the enforcement gap. IBM reports that 20% of organizations have experienced breaches from unsanctioned AI usage, with 97% lacking proper access controls. Without automated enforcement, employees can inadvertently expose classified data to AI tools.
- Automated enforcement makes DSPM classifications actionable. By ingesting MIP labels and applying dynamic policies based on data sensitivity and recipient context, enforcement ensures protection follows data wherever it travels.
- Integration doesn’t require replacing your DSPM investment. Enforcement solutions work with existing DSPM platforms—Microsoft Purview, Cyera, Varonis, BigID, and others—extending their value rather than competing with them.
Where DSPM Coverage Ends: The Data-in-Motion Blind Spot
DSPM has earned its place in the enterprise security stack. These solutions scan repositories, identify sensitive data, apply classifications, and give security teams visibility they’ve never had before. The market reflects this value—Frost & Sullivan reports the DSPM market reached $415 million in 2024 and is growing at 37.4% annually.
But there’s a fundamental architectural limitation that DSPM vendors rarely emphasize in their sales pitches.
DSPM Excels at Data at Rest
DSPM tools are built to answer critical questions: Where does sensitive data live? How is it classified? Who has access? Is it compliant with regulatory compliance requirements? They scan file shares, cloud storage, databases, and SaaS applications to build a comprehensive map of your data landscape.
This capability is genuinely valuable. You can’t protect what you can’t see, and most organizations have spent years accumulating sensitive data across dozens of repositories without any centralized visibility.
The Network Edge Problem
The challenge emerges when data needs to move. Business doesn’t happen in isolation. Organizations share files with vendors, collaborate with partners, send reports to auditors, and exchange information with customers constantly.
When a file classified as “Confidential” by your DSPM gets attached to an email or uploaded to a partner portal, what happens? In most environments, nothing. The classification exists as metadata, but no system enforces protection based on that classification once the data crosses your network boundary.
This is the data-in-motion blind spot. DSPM watches data at rest. Nobody’s watching when it moves.
What Data in Motion Actually Looks Like
Data leaves organizations through multiple channels every day:
- Email attachments sent to external recipients via secure email or unsecured channels
- Secure file sharing with vendors, partners, and customers
- Managed file transfer to business partners
- API integrations exchanging data with third-party systems
- Secure web forms collecting or distributing information
- Collaboration platforms enabling work with external parties
Each of these channels represents a potential gap where DSPM classifications exist but enforcement doesn’t.
The Risk of the Enforcement Gap
The gap between discovery and enforcement isn’t a theoretical concern. It manifests in breach statistics, regulatory findings, and incident response timelines.
Third-Party Risk Exposure
External collaboration has become the soft underbelly of enterprise security. Secureframe research reveals that 61% of companies experienced third-party data breaches in the last 12 months—a 49% increase from 2023. Even more striking: 98% of organizations have at least one vendor in their supply chain that has experienced a breach.
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report adds another dimension to this risk. Supply chain breaches now represent 15% of all breaches and take an average of 267 days to contain—the longest of any attack vector. When sensitive data leaves your organization without enforcement, you’re extending trust without verification. Effective third-party risk management requires protection that follows data beyond your perimeter.
Multi-Environment Complexity
Modern enterprises don’t store data in one place. It lives across on-premises systems, multiple cloud providers, SaaS applications, and partner environments. Frost & Sullivan found that 40% of breaches involve data distributed across multiple environments.
DSPM can discover and classify data across these environments. But when data moves between them—which it does constantly—classifications don’t automatically translate into protection. A file tagged as “Restricted” in your Azure environment doesn’t carry that protection when transferred to a partner’s AWS instance. Organizations dealing with data sovereignty requirements face even greater complexity.
Shadow AI Creates New Exposure Vectors
The rapid adoption of AI tools has created a new category of risk that many organizations are still scrambling to address. According to IBM, 20% of organizations have already experienced breaches tied to unsanctioned AI usage. These incidents add approximately $670,000 to average breach costs.
Perhaps most concerning: 97% of organizations that experienced AI-related breaches lacked proper access controls. Employees are uploading sensitive documents to AI tools for summarization, analysis, or content generation—often without realizing they’re exposing classified data to third-party systems. Proper AI data governance requires enforcement that intercepts data before it reaches unauthorized destinations.
Without automated enforcement that intercepts and applies policies to data before it reaches these tools, DSPM classifications are just labels on files that are already being shared inappropriately.
What Automated Policy Enforcement Looks Like in Practice
Closing the enforcement gap requires a system that consumes DSPM classifications and applies protection in real time when data moves externally. This isn’t about replacing DSPM—it’s about making DSPM actionable.
How Classification-Based Enforcement Works
The enforcement process connects DSPM discovery to real-time protection through several steps:
| Stage | What Happens | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Classification | DSPM discovers and labels sensitive data | Document tagged “Confidential—PII/PHI“ |
| Detection | Enforcement layer detects classification when data is shared | User attaches file to external email |
| Context Evaluation | System evaluates sender, recipient, and data sensitivity | Employee sending to known vendor vs. unknown recipient |
| Policy Application | Appropriate protection applied automatically | Encryption required, download restricted, watermark applied |
| Audit Logging | Complete record created for compliance | Who, what, when, where, how captured in audit logs |
Dynamic Policy Enforcement
Effective enforcement isn’t binary. Rather than simply blocking or allowing, context-aware systems can apply graduated protections based on the specific situation:
- End-to-end encryption for sensitive data going to authorized external recipients
- View-only access for highly classified documents that shouldn’t be downloaded
- Watermarking to deter unauthorized redistribution through digital rights management
- Possessionless editing enabling collaboration without file downloads
- Blocking for attempts to share restricted data with unauthorized parties
This nuanced approach maintains productivity while ensuring protection. Users can still collaborate—they just can’t do so in ways that violate data security policies.
Integration Without Rearchitecture
Modern enforcement solutions integrate with DSPM platforms through Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) labels or direct API connections. This means organizations can:
- Continue using their existing DSPM investment
- Leverage classifications already applied to data
- Avoid retagging or reclassifying existing content
- Maintain consistent policies across discovery and enforcement
The DSPM handles discovery and classification. The enforcement layer handles protection. Each does what it does best.
From Visibility to Control: Outcomes and Benefits
When organizations close the enforcement gap, DSPM transforms from a reporting tool into an active defense system.
Automated Compliance Across Regulations
DSPM classifications can automatically trigger regulation-specific controls:
- CUI-tagged documents receive CMMC compliance protections
- PHI-classified files trigger HIPAA compliance safeguards
- Personal data enforces GDPR compliance requirements automatically
- Financial records apply SOX and GLBA controls
This eliminates the manual process of mapping classifications to compliance requirements. The policy engine handles it automatically based on the labels DSPM has already applied.
Measurable Security Improvements
Organizations implementing automated enforcement alongside DSPM typically see:
- 100% policy enforcement for classified data shared externally
- Complete audit trails for every external data interaction
- Reduced incident response time through automated controls
- Simplified compliance reporting with unified visibility
Operational Efficiency Gains
Beyond security improvements, enforcement automation reduces operational burden:
- One classification system drives all protection policies
- No additional user training required for policy compliance
- Reduced help desk tickets related to secure file sharing
- Faster audit preparation with comprehensive logging
IBM’s research indicates organizations using AI-powered security automation save an average of $1.9 million per breach and detect threats 80 days faster than those without automation.
Kiteworks Private Data Network Closes the Critical DSPM Enforcement Gap
The gap between DSPM discovery and data protection requires a solution purpose-built for securing data in motion. The Kiteworks Private Data Network addresses this gap through several key capabilities.
Automated Policy Enforcement via MIP Integration. Kiteworks ingests classifications from any DSPM solution through Microsoft Information Protection labels, automatically applying protection policies when classified data is shared externally. No manual intervention required.
Encryption for Data in Motion Across All Channels. Unlike point solutions that protect only one sharing method, Kiteworks enforces AES 256 encryption across email, file sharing, managed file transfer, APIs, and web forms. Sensitive data stays protected regardless of how it leaves your organization.
SafeEDIT Possessionless Editing. For highly sensitive documents, SafeEDIT enables external collaboration without file downloads. Recipients can view and edit documents without ever taking possession of the file, eliminating the risk of uncontrolled copies.
Zero Trust Architecture for External Sharing. Kiteworks extends zero-trust principles beyond your network perimeter, verifying every access request and enforcing least-privilege access even for external recipients.
Comprehensive Audit Logging. Every access, share, modification, and transfer is logged with complete detail, providing the audit trail required for regulatory compliance and incident investigation.
Organizations protecting sensitive data across external collaboration can’t afford to stop at discovery. Kiteworks transforms DSPM classifications into enforced protection, completing your data security strategy.
To learn more about closing this critical gap in your DSPM investment, schedule a custom demo today.
Frequently Asked Questions
DSPM and data-in-motion protection address different phases of the data lifecycle. DSPM focuses on discovering, classifying, and monitoring sensitive data at rest across repositories and cloud environments. Data-in-motion protection enforces security policies when that data is shared externally through email, file transfers, or collaboration tools. Organizations need both for complete coverage—DSPM provides visibility while data-in-motion protection ensures classifications translate into enforced protection.
Automated policy enforcement solutions can integrate with existing DSPM platforms without requiring organizations to replace their current investments. Integration typically occurs through Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) labels, which serve as a universal classification standard. When a DSPM solution like Purview, Varonis, Cyera, or BigID applies a MIP label, the enforcement layer reads that label and applies corresponding protection policies automatically.
Automated enforcement helps organizations meet CMMC 2.0 compliance requirements for Controlled Unclassified Information by ensuring CUI-classified documents automatically receive compliant protections when shared externally. When DSPM tags a document as CUI, the enforcement layer applies required controls—encryption, access controls, audit logging—without manual intervention. This creates the documented, consistent protection CMMC assessors look for.
Organizations needing external collaboration without file downloads can use possessionless editing technology like SafeEDIT. This approach allows external recipients to view and edit sensitive documents through a secure interface without ever downloading the actual file. The document never leaves the protected environment, eliminating risks from uncontrolled copies while maintaining full collaboration capabilities.
Organizations address shadow AI risks through automated policy enforcement that intercepts data sharing attempts before they reach unauthorized AI tools. When an employee tries to upload a classified document to an AI service, the enforcement layer detects the DSPM classification and applies appropriate controls—blocking the transfer, requiring approval, or allowing with logging depending on policy. This prevents inadvertent exposure without requiring employees to manually check classifications. A robust AI data governance strategy combines DSPM visibility with enforcement to close this gap.
Additional Resources
- Blog Post DSPM vs Traditional Data Security: Closing Critical Data Protection Gaps
- Blog Post DSPM for Law Firms: Client Confidentiality in the Cloud Era
- Blog Post DSPM for Healthcare: Securing PHI Across Cloud and Hybrid Environments
- Blog Post DSPM for Pharma: Protecting Clinical Trial Data and Intellectual Property
- Blog Post DSPM in Banking: Beyond Regulatory Compliance to Comprehensive Data Protection