Your business relies on your people, and those people rely on software. In turn, that software (SaaS) relies on high-quality data to drive your day-to-day work. You need to ensure all the right people – and none of the wrong people – have access to the SaaS applications and data they need to do their jobs, but if that data or SaaS app access falls into the wrong hands, that puts your business at risk.In this post, we’re going to talk about two critical types of security posture management for your business, as well as help you understand which is the better fit for your needs.What Is SSPM?SSPM is an acronym that stands for SaaS security posture management. Let’s break it down. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the phrase “security posture”:The security status of an enterprise’s networks, information, and systems based on information security resources (e.g., people, hardware, software, policies) and capabilities in place to manage the defense of the enterprise and to react as the situation changes.SaaS, as you know, stands for software as a service. Once we break apart the acronym, SSPM becomes a clear concept. It’s a concept that encapsulates the security status of your software-as-a-service applications, based on the resources and capabilities of your organization’s security team(s). Put more simply, SSPM is an abstract measurement of how well you’ve prepared your organization to deal with threats to your cloud applications.What Is DSPM?Similar to SSPM, DSPM is an acronym that stands for data security posture management. With our definition of security posture above, DSPM becomes pretty straightforward: It’s all the actions your teams take (aka how well-equipped your organization is) to handle security threats to your organization’s key data. One disclaimer: Often, when people think of “key organizational data,” they think only of data that’s in the cloud. DSPM covers much more than just cloud data. Yes, it covers how your organization manages access to an S3 bucket that contains sales leads. But it also covers how you manage physical access to your offline server backups, too.SSPM vs. DSPM: Key DifferencesSSPM and DSPM overlap in critical ways. Your SaaS security posture includes measuring how effective you are at dealing with the data stored in your SaaS applications. And your DSPM encompasses managing which cloud applications access which data, including data lakes within your organization. That may sound very similar to SSPM.But SSPM and DSPM hold key differences that expose why each is distinctly important in your organization’s security strategy.SSPM Is About Application ManagementAt its heart, the question SSPM asks is, “How are you going to manage your cloud applications?” That’s a question that draws on a lot more than just data. We’ll cover more in the following sections, but SSPM addresses challenges like how you configure your cloud services, which users have access to which applications, and what they can do when they’re using those applications.DSPM Is About What Happens With Your DataThe DSPM question answers a broader variety of questions than just which users and applications can access which data. DSPM is also about addressing challenges like where your data is stored, how users access it, and what happens when you need to recover from data loss.Key SSPM CapabilitiesIf you’re looking to improve your SSPM, whether through internal projects, tightening your policies, or engaging with a third-party integration partner, you’ll want to focus on the following aspects.Configuration ManagementToday’s SaaS applications are far-flung, creating a sprawling environment that is anything but centralized. Unlike configuration management from 20 years ago, you likely can’t simply enforce a strict set of policies from a central Active Directory server and call it a day. Instead, you need a tool that brings these disparate applications into a single dashboard, so you can understand and improve your security posture quickly and easily.Access ControlUser AccessYes, you need to provide access for the right peopleto applications they need to perform daily work. But even more, you need to make sure the wrong people don’t have access, too. Business is moving at such a rapid pace these days that users are constantly collaborating, sharing access with each other, and even sharing access with third parties outside the organization. If you don’t have the ability to enforce policies quickly and consistently in a way that meets your organization’s risk thresholds, chances are the wrong person is going to end up with access. Managing access is a core part of your SaaS security posture. App and Extension AccessAccess control in the age of AI, where there’s an app for nearly every work task your users perform, also means understanding which browser extensions and applications are requesting access to your SaaS environment that undoubtedly holds proprietary intellectual property and other sensitive data. That means you need a way to identify and assess the risks of every single application and extension requesting access to your SaaS environments. Then you need a streamlined, automated way to block risky apps or extensions and approve those that fall within your risk threshold, because no IT team has time to do that manually. A good SSPM setup bakes this in as a key capability.Threat Detection and ResponseAnother core tenet of your security posture is your ability to respond to emerging threats. No matter how careful your preparation, it’s impossible to eliminate every risk. Eventually, you’re going to need to handle situations you didn’t explicitly prepare for. That’s when you want a tool that has dynamic (and automated, ideally) detection and response capabilities, so you’re prepared even for situations you haven’t seen.Key DSPM CapabilitiesJust like SSPM, if you want to improve your DSPM, it’s important to understand the key capabilities you should search for when evaluating solutions. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to handle things in-house or partner with an expert, you need to make sure you cover the following bases.Data Classification and DiscoveryIt’s impossible to secure your data if you don’t know what data you have. This sounds obvious, but give it a moment’s thought. Do you know what data your organization has? Are you sure? What about when John in accounting emails a spreadsheet to Shirly in procurement? Do you know whether it’s stored in her Google Drive™ folders, on her local machine, or on a USB? Data sprawls very quickly.A high-quality DSPM will enable you to discover and classify all the data in your organization so you can properly secure it everywhere it exists.Data EncryptionNo matter how well you secure your data, you cannot eliminate all risk of someone accessing that data without authorization. You can mitigate, reduce, and address risk, but you can’t eliminate it. There’s an old joke that the world’s only truly secure computer is one that’s unplugged and buried in concrete at the bottom of the ocean. If you want to use your data, you need to expose your company to the risk of exfiltration. To mitigate against those risks, a proper control is needed, allowing you to maintain a strong security posture. Both experts and standardized security frameworks advise organizations to encrypt their data both in flight and at rest. Improving your DSPM means ensuring that you’ve got the right encryption controls in place for all your data.Access ControlThis is where you cross over into SSPM. Both types of security posture management rely on answering questions about who can access what data and when. Moreover, strong security posture solutions offer documentation and tracking that allow you to audit both ongoing and historical data access. Instead of simply knowing who can access data, a mature security posture allows you to say with confidence that a specific user did or didn’t access some data at a point in time.When Might You Need Both?If you run a modern technology organization of any size, you already have both a SaaS security posture and a data security posture. Meaning, \you already have a posture for both SaaS and data. The only question that you need to answer is whether you’re going to actively manage it or not. If you are, engaging a security posture management tool for SaaS application security, and one for data security, or a solution that covers both is the next step.Spin.AI Are the Experts When it comes to SaaS security, Spin.AI has you covered. For robust SSPM, including comprehensive access control, configuration management, risk assessment of apps and extensions, and more,We maintain a team of experts in concentrated security fields, including security research, and we’ve tasked them with building an industry-leading platform that brings their expertise to your fingertips. Instead of needing to source and hire a dozen experts or maintain multiple tools and manual processes, you can leverage their skills in the form of SpinSPM to improve your security posture in a snap. Take an interactive product tour today.FAQWhat’s the real difference between SSPM, DSPM, and DLP—and do I need all three?SSPM finds and fixes risky SaaS configurations, users, and third‐party app access; DSPM discovers sensitive data, maps access paths, and flags exposure; DLP enforces policies to block or quarantine data leaks in real time. Together they prevent breaches by combining visibility (SSPM/DSPM) with enforcement (DLP). If compliance and data exposure are top concerns, Spin.AI unifies SSPM, DSPM, and DLP for SaaS applications so you can prioritize risk, apply policies, and track posture improvements from a single platform. Share this article Share this post on Linkedin Share this post on X Share this post on Facebook Share this post on Reddit Was this helpful? Yes No Submit Cancel Thanks for your feedback!