Data Exposure Audit (DSPM)

What DSPM is, and how Aikido's Data Exposure Audit takes a code-based approach.

Data security posture management (DSPM) helps you understand where sensitive data lives, who can access it, how it's protected, and where it may be exposed.

Sensitive data doesn't stay in one place. It moves through APIs, databases, logs, queues, SaaS tools, warehouses, backups, and AI workflows, because your application moves it. Traditional DSPM finds where that data landed in storage. For developers, the harder question is often: what code path created the exposure?

Use cases

• Map sensitive data in code: See how PII, secrets, tokens, and customer data move through your app
• Catch exposure before it ships: Find unsafe logging, over-broad APIs, and third-party sharing from source
• Fix the source of the leak: Get evidence and remediation in code, without connecting your databases
• Support privacy and compliance reviews: Tie data handling gaps back to concrete code paths

Traditional DSPM vs code-based DSPM

Traditional DSPM scans the data estate (buckets, databases, warehouses, SaaS apps, backups) to classify sensitive data and check permissions. Useful for security teams mapping where data already sits.

Code-based DSPM starts from source instead. It reasons about how data enters, moves, is stored, and leaves the application, then points at the code change that reduces the risk, without connecting to your datastores.

	Code-based DSPM	Traditional DSPM
Starts from	Application source code	Storage and connected platforms
Core question	What code path created the exposure?	Where does sensitive data live?
Access needed	Repositories only	Datastores and cloud data systems

Traditional DSPM finds sensitive data where it lives. Code-based DSPM finds how it gets exposed.

Data Exposure Audit in Aikido

In Aikido, Data Exposure Audit is the data-focused audit type in AI Code Analysis. It is our code-based DSPM, alongside Code Security Audit for finding code exploits with AI. A Data Exposure Audit maps sensitive data handling in your repositories and returns findings with evidence and remediation in code. No database access required. To run one, see Run a Data Exposure Audit. For the finding classes in scope, see What Data Exposure Audit Finds.

For a longer product perspective on what DSPM actually means, see our blog What developers need to know about DSPM and data exposure in code.