What Is Data Security Management? A 2025 Guide to Protecting Your Business Data

Data Security Management (DSM) ensures data is secure, protected, and only accessible to authorised individuals. In this way, it is the bedrock of any organisation's plans to protect their customers and data from cyber threats. As a discipline, it helps organisations comply with internal policies and public regulations.  

The EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) highlights the critical importance of digital technologies. It aims to ensure financial businesses can continue operating during major outages.

As seen during a routine CrowdStrike code change in July 2024, heavy reliance on digital systems can lead to massive losses. That incident alone cost businesses hundreds of millions of pounds. For Fortune 500 companies, the total estimated loss reached $5.4 billion. Without proper backup systems, businesses may have to resort to pen-and-paper operations.

Customers expect their data to be secure. To meet this expectation, having the right processes, practices, and technologies to manage data security is essential.

What is Data Security Management?

Data Security Management ensures that data is protected, remains unaltered, and is not accessed or stolen by unauthorised individuals. It also ensures that data is available to those who need it. This concept aligns with the CIA triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Achieving the CIA triad requires a delicate balance. For example, making data easily accessible might compromise its integrity. Success depends on understanding the type of data and its purpose e.g. protecting intellectual property demands different controls than managing a public website.

To manage data security effectively, start by defining a data classification policy. This policy outlines the required controls and processes for different types of data. For example, compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict rules on how long data can be retained, including backups. Organisations must identify data that should be deleted, locate its instances across their systems, and ensure it is not restored from backups.

Oversight of how data is used and stored within an organisation is critical for maintaining security and compliance.

Key Components of Data Security Management

One critical aspect of data security is data classification. Organisations often use labels to categorise data, defining how it should be handled both internally and externally. This includes rules for transporting data within and outside the organisation. For example, should data be encrypted when stored (at rest), how should it be transmitted (in transit).  Policies should also cover physical copies, such as whether data must be personally delivered by a trusted employee or if a signed-for courier is sufficient. These rules are part of a broader data governance framework, which also addresses breach responses and risk management practices.

Data security requires demonstrating that proper controls are in place and tracking who accesses the data. For Personally Identifiable Information (PII), access must be restricted to authorised individuals. Sensitive data should either be encrypted, allowing only authorized access, or hashed, as with credit card information. Hashing is a one-way mathematical function that turns data into a string of nondescript text that cannot be reversed or decoded. The same data can be verified by applying the same hash (ideally with a salt to make brute-force attacks more difficult (a salt is a way of increasing the difficulty of decrypting by adding a random value).

No technology or process is foolproof. Risk management plays a crucial role in addressing the question: what happens if data falls into the wrong hands? Effective risk management involves assessing the potential impact and implementing mitigations to ensure appropriate efforts are made to contain risks.

Emerging threats in data security

Organisations today face numerous threats, with phishing being the most common entry point. Attackers use phishing to trick individuals into clicking malicious links, installing malware, or entering credentials on fake websites. This makes user education a critical line of defense.

Once inside a system, attackers may aim to maintain access and move through the network to gather sensitive information. Alternatively, they may deploy ransomware to lock the organisation’s data and demand payment for its release. A well-known example is the ransomware attack on Maersk, which severely disrupted operations and forced the company to revert to pen-and-paper processes.

Another major risk comes from the insider threat. A single wrong hiring decision, a disgruntled employee, or someone under coercion can compromise the organisation. This highlights the importance of zero-trust principles and strong controls. Monitoring user activity and detecting data loss are both critical. For example, are employees accessing data they shouldn't? Are they transferring data to unauthorised locations or logging in at unusual hours?

These risks tie back to the value of a data classification policy. Such a policy ensures you can detect inappropriate access and prevent misuse by defining clear rules for how data is handled, monitored, and protected.

How to implement a Data Security Management strategy

Before implementing a strategy, you must first understand what you’re protecting. Define the layers of controls required and base them on your data classification levels. These levels guide your protections. Additionally, identify data stewards—the individuals responsible for specific data—and outline their actions if that data is compromised.

Ownership is critical in any security policy. Securing buy-in from key stakeholders is essential for overseeing, supporting, and running these processes. While it’s a cliché, security is everyone’s responsibility. A single weak link can compromise the entire system.

Phishing remains a top method attackers use to breach organisations. This makes user education a vital part of any security policy. Users need to understand the risks and their role in safeguarding data.

Organisations should also implement password managers to help employees securely manage their credentials. It's ideal to choose a service that supports both personal and professional use while keeping the two separate. Combined with single sign-on (SSO), this approach simplifies access management while enhancing security.

Best practices for Data Security Management in 2025

In security, the concept of defense in depth remains a cornerstone. Traditionally, it’s likened to a castle-and-moat approach: an outer layer (the moat) protects the perimeter, while retractable drawbridges and defenders on the walls (arrow men) provide additional safeguards. Even with Zero Trust principles, defense in depth is still essential.

Zero Trust assumes everything is suspicious until proven otherwise. Access is granted based on identity verification and device security. For example, a device connecting from a suspicious location may have restricted access until the user completes additional checks, such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). MFA combines something you know (a password), something you have (an authentication device), or something you are (biometrics).

Identity as the new perimeter

The traditional perimeter—defined as the edge of an organisation’s network—has become blurred with the rise of cloud computing. Today, identity is often considered the new perimeter. Verifying a user’s identity is critical, and tools like Single Sign-On (SSO) help manage access. SSO simplifies controlling permissions, especially when employees leave, ensuring seamless security.

Patching: A key security measure

Patching remains a crucial part of protecting an organisation. According to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, unpatched vulnerabilities saw a 180% increase in exploitation between 2022 and 2023. Keeping systems updated is one of the simplest yet most effective defenses against attacks.

Vigilance and monitoring

Organisations must monitor activity and identify patterns that deviate from normal behavior. This can be challenging—especially if attackers are already inside the network when the baseline for “normal” is established. Continuous vigilance, staying informed about emerging threats, and regular system reviews are essential.

Auditing is also critical to verifying systems and processes. This might include remote penetration tests or internal audits to ensure compliance with IT policies. Staying proactive in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities is key to maintaining robust security.

How a data catalog supports Data Security Management

A data catalog is an essential tool for enhancing data security management. It provides a centralised, searchable repository of all an organisation's data assets, enabling better visibility, governance, and control over sensitive information. By integrating with data classification policies and governance frameworks, a data catalog ensures that data security measures are consistent and scalable.

One of the key benefits of a data catalog is its ability to support data classification. It allows organisations to label data assets with attributes such as sensitivity level, ownership, and usage restrictions. This ensures that sensitive information, like Personally Identifiable Information (PII), is identified and protected according to compliance requirements like GDPR. It also helps enforce rules for encryption, access controls, and secure data transmission, as outlined in your broader data governance strategy.

The data catalog also strengthens monitoring and auditing efforts. By tracking how data is accessed, who is using it, and where it resides, organisations can quickly detect unusual behavior, such as unauthorised access or potential data loss. This aligns with the need for vigilance and ongoing audits to maintain robust security measures.

Additionally, a data catalog simplifies stakeholder collaboration. It clarifies ownership by identifying data stewards, making it easier to assign responsibility for specific datasets. This supports the goal of fostering accountability and ensuring swift action when breaches or irregularities occur.

In a landscape where identity is the new perimeter and the threat of phishing, ransomware, and insider risks continues to grow, a data catalog empowers organisations to manage these challenges effectively. It bridges the gap between data governance and security, ensuring that critical data remains secure, accessible, and compliant with regulatory standards.

Conclusion

As we have seen, a strong Data Security Management policy covers a wide-ranging number of activities, from processes, technology to education.  Defense in depth is still critical to protecting an organisation – as is a continual, healthy paranoia of any suspicious activity.

We have all heard the phrase "trust and verify." Data security management is more wide-ranging. It involves understanding what you are protecting and why, and then putting suitable measures in place to protect, detect, respond, and continually monitor both compliance and possible breaches.

Curious to learn how a data catalog can help you improve your data security? Book a demo with us today.