DSPM, ASM, and ITDR: Building a Data-Driven, Exposure-Aware Security Strategy

Security teams struggle with too many alerts, incomplete asset inventories, and identity-based attacks that evade detection. The SANS 2025 ASM Survey confirms that Attack Surface Management (ASM) is critical for defense but incomplete on its own. By combining Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) to define what matters and monitor who accesses or abuses it, with ASM to show where exposure exists, and optionally ITDR to uncover identity attack patterns, organizations can align defenses with the attacker’s playbook and achieve a data-driven, identity- and exposure-aware security posture.

The Challenge: Gaps Between Security Theory and Reality

For years, security teams have drowned in alerts, incomplete asset inventories, and overexposed sensitive data that creates unacceptable risk. The result is what the SANS 2025 ASM Survey calls “the persistent gap between security theory and operational reality.”

The SANS 2025 ASM Survey quantifies these gaps.

• Only 28% of organizations can effectively identify sensitive files across their attack surface.
• 89% expect risk quantification for each asset, but most platforms fall short.
• 67% want actionable remediation guidance when vulnerabilities have public exploits.
• 55% need protection that spans both internal and external assets.

These findings confirm that Attack Surface Management (ASM) delivers valuable visibility but still leaves unanswered questions: Which exposures actually touch sensitive data? Which data risks should teams prioritize first? Who has excessive or unnecessary access to crown-jewel data?

This is where Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) complements ASM — by correlating exposure insights with identity and data context, enabling organizations to prioritize and remediate risks through a unified, data-driven defense strategy.

DSPM: Knowing What Matters

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) is the foundation for modern exposure management. Without it, ASM generates asset inventories without context. As the survey revealed, only 28% of ASM platforms effectively identify sensitive files — a blind spot attackers exploit.

With DSPM, organizations can:

• Discover and classify sensitive and shadow data across Microsoft 365, SQL databases, file servers, Oracle Database, Azure Files, and other on-premises and cloud repositories to gain complete visibility into your data security posture.
• Label and protect sensitive data to enforce policies and prevent exfiltration.
• Assess risks like excessive permissions, empty security groups, or unmanaged accounts.
• Secure AI adoption by reducing oversharing, misclassification, or mislabeling risks with tools like Microsoft Copilot.

DSPM tells you what truly matters. It defines which data is sensitive and worth protecting. But it also goes further — helping organizations understand who has access to that data and detecting when that access is misused.

• Excessive permission analysis:Identify over-privileged accounts, dormant high-privilege access, and violations of least privilege.
• Shadow data access mapping: Visualize who can reach sensitive data and through what attack paths.
• Suspicious activity detection: Track and analyze interactions to uncover unusual or unauthorized access, insider threats, or compromised accounts before they lead to a breach.

By combining data classification, access visibility, and activity monitoring, DSPM enables teams to shrink their attack surface and align defenses with real business risk.

ASM: Knowing Where You’re Exposed

Attack Surface Management (ASM) gives security teams visibility intoexposures. The survey stresses that “unknown or forgotten assets become primary vectors for compromise.” Many organizations already recognize this:

• 55% demand ASM cover both internal and external assets.
• 59% want daily ASM scans.
• 67% expect remediation guidance when public exploits exist.
• 47% integrate ASM with penetration testing to fuel validation.

ASM answers the where — where assets exist, where exposures lie, and where attackers could gain a foothold. But ASM alone often drowns teams in raw data.

When paired with DSPM, ASM can prioritize exposures that actually touch sensitive data. That context turns a flood of findings into a focused defense strategy.

• Get deeper insights into these findings by downloading the full SANS 2025 ASM Survey report-
  
  

ITDR: Because Data Security Starts with Identity

Identities have become the modern attack surface. Even when you know who has access to what and when that access is used or abused, attackers exploit how that access works — elevating privileges, moving laterally, and concealing their activity.

Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) detects, prevents, contains identity misuse in real time and enables rapid recovery when incidents occur:

• Identify and remediate risks across Active Directory and Entra ID before attackers exploit them.
• Prevent identity compromise by blocking unauthorized changes to Tier 0 assets or critical configurations that could enable lateral movement.
• Detect advanced identity attacks such as Golden Ticket, Kerberoasting, and DCShadowand abnormal behavior using UEBA and machine-learning baselines.
• Deploy deception techniques,including honeytokens and decoy accounts, to expose lateral movement early in the attack chain.
• Trigger automated response to disable compromised accounts or terminate malicious sessionsbefore credential abuse spreads.
• Recover with confidence by instantly rolling back accidental or malicious changes, restoring deleted AD objects, and automating forest recovery.

ITDR ensures that when attackers target identities, the attacks are detected and contained before damage is done.

The Complete Approach: Data + Assets + Identities

DSPM and ASM shrink the attack surface and highlight what’s worth protecting, while ITDR ensures that identity misuse is caught before attackers can escalate. Together, they deliver a data-driven, identity-aware, and exposure-aware security posture.

Think of the progression like this:

• DSPM = What → Know what matters (sensitive data) and who is accessing it.
• ASM = Where → Know where you’re exposed (attack surface).
• ITDR = Who → Know what threatens your environment (identity threats).

Identity-aware security makes clear what Netwrix has long emphasized: Data Security Starts with Identity. By combining these three approaches, organizations can align defenses directly with how attackers operate.

Why Netwrix

Netwrix’s solutions work together to help organizations gain visibility into their data, control access, and detect threats before they escalate.

• Netwrix Data Security Posture Management(DSPM) to discover and classify sensitive data, assess its exposure, monitor how it’s accessed, and prevent data loss across on-premises and cloud environments. With continuous visibility into where your sensitive data resides, who has access to it, and how it’s used, you can proactively reduce risk and strengthen your data security posture.
• Netwrix Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)to strengthen that protection by securing the very identities that govern access to this data. It prevents threats, detects and responds to identity-based attacks in real time, helping you contain attacks before they impact your business.It also ensures rapid recovery by rolling back unwanted changes, restoring deleted objects, and automating forest recovery to maintain business continuity.

Combined, they give security leaders thevisibility and control they need to build a defense that is both pragmatic and powerful, one that meets attackers where they operate and reduces risk faster.

Final Thought

As the SANS 2025 ASM Survey makes clear, ASM is now a strategic pillar of defense. But without DSPM to define what matters and ITDR to stop identity abuse, ASM remains incomplete.

By uniting all three, CISOs can finally close the gap between knowing the attack surface and securing it effectively.

Speak with our experts to learn how Netwrix can help you align DSPM, ASM, and ITDR into a unified security strategy. Contact our experts today.