What are the 4 classifications of information?

Definition

Data classification is a method for defining and categorizing files and other critical business information. It’s mainly used in large organizations to build security systems that follow strict compliance guidelines but can also be used in small environments. The most important use of data classification is to understand the sensitivity of stored information to build the right cybersecurity tools, access controls, and monitoring around it.

Data classification is the process of categorizing data assets based on their information sensitivity. By classifying data, organizations can determine two key things:

• Who should be authorized to access it.
• What protection policies to apply when storing and transferring it.

Classification can also help determine applicable regulatory standards to protect the data. Overall, data classification helps organizations better manage their data for privacy, compliance, and cybersecurity.

Reasons to Perform Data Classification

Every organization should classify the data it creates, manages, and stores. But it’s even more critical for large enterprise environments. That’s because large enterprises have data assets spread across many locations, including the cloud.

Administrators must track and audit this information to ensure it has the proper authentication and access controls. Data classification enables administrators to identify the locations that store sensitive data and determine how it should be accessed and shared.

Classification is an essential first step to meeting almost any data compliance mandate. HIPAA, GDPR, FERPA, and other regulatory governing bodies require data to be labeled so that security and authentication controls can limit access. Labeling data helps organize and secure it. The exercise also reduces needlessly duplicated data, cuts storage costs, increases performance, and keeps it trackable as it's shared.

Data classification is the foundation for effective data protection policies and data loss prevention (DLP) rules. For effective DLP rules, you first must classify your data to ensure that you know the data stored in every file.

Types of Data Classification

Any stored data can be classified into categories. To classify your data, you must ask several questions as you discover and review it. Use the following sample questions as you review each section of your data:

Methods of Data Classification

Data classification works closely with other technology to better protect and govern data. Should the organization suffer a data breach, data classification helps administrators identify lost data and potentially help track down the cyber-criminal.

Here are technologies that rely on data classification:

As you consider these levels, you can better classify your data. Data classification typically is broken down into four categories:

Public Data

This data is available to the public either locally or over the internet. Public data requires little security because its disclosure would not violate compliance.

Internal-Only Data

Memos, intellectual property, and email messages are a few examples of data that should be restricted to internal employees.

Confidential Data

The difference between internal-only data and confidential data is that confidential data requires clearance to access it. You can assign clearance to specific employees or authorized third-party vendors.

Restricted Data

Restricted data usually refers to government information that only authorized individuals can access. Disclosure of restricted data may result in irrefutable damage to corporate revenue and reputation.

Aligning on an Asset List

Before you begin a data classification review, Proofpoint and your organization must be on the same page. At the start of the review, Proofpoint and your organization create an asset list to define your business categories. For example, you may have files that store technology, financial, and customer data. Defining categories aligns your security requirements with your data.

This step also involves applying data classification levels defined in the previous section. For each category, you will likely have different classification levels for each group of files. This beginning step builds a foundation for the entire data classification process.

Data Classification Process

When you decide it’s time to classify data to meet compliance standards, the first step is implementing procedures to assist with data location, classification, and determining the proper cybersecurity. Executing each procedure depends on your organization's compliance standards and the infrastructure that best secures data. The general data classification steps are:

Streamlining the Data Classification Process

While you can streamline the data classification process and even automate some of it, the process still requires elements of human review and manual procedures.

Automated systems suggest labeling and classification, but a human review determines whether these labels are correct. Objectives and standards must be outlined and defined, which requires human reviewers and IT staff.

Automated tools flag digital assets for human review. The list displays the objects (such as data around a given customer) and the rules (such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS) that apply to each. Some automation tools can index objects. (Indexing is a process of sorting and organizing data to enable quick and efficient searching on the network.)

Other policies also apply during the process of data classification. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU regulation that gives consumers the right to have their data deleted. Organizations must comply when they store consumer data in the EU. Some data classification tools index objects so that they can be quickly removed when customers ask.

Data Classification Examples

One of the most challenging steps in classifying data is understanding the risks. While compliance standards oversee most private sensitive data, organizations must adhere to compliance regulations applicable to different data stored in files and databases. Data classification helps secure data and ensure compliance. It’s essential for following GDPR requirements. (Organizations must index EU consumer data so it can be deleted on request, for instance.)

GDPR also mandates protecting secondary personal information such as customers’ ethnic origin, political opinions, race, and religious beliefs. To do so, organizations must classify this data and set the proper permissions across digital assets. Classification determines who can access this data so that it’s not misused. Only then can they avoid disclosing private consumer information and costly data breaches.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Data Classification

Data classification requires human interaction, but much of the process can be automated. To add automation with decision-making capabilities, Proofpoint created a data classification engine that offers 99% accuracy in its predictions. AI automation ensures that organizations can identify, classify, and protect their documents on an ongoing basis, meaning the engine continually scans and reviews new documents as they are added to the environment.

Proofpoint balances human reviews with AI-based classification. The Active Learning module ingests about 20 documents per category to start the process and improve accuracy. The data classification engine uses machine-learning models to recognize patterns. Every group of files should be diverse so that the machine learning algorithms will have better accuracy.

Machine learning models predict labels for documents and determine the accuracy of their predictions. A “confidence level” is shown to a reviewer to reassess model data for another round of information classification. If the model says accuracy is low, human reviewers can update models to have more diverse sets of files to improve accuracy. The engine will retrain itself by leveraging the new information to yield new, optimal results. Proofpoint built its engine to be an access-based assignment of documents, so it assigns users access permissions only on files required to perform their job functions.

Proofpoint’s AI-powered data classification software reduces much of the overhead for a process that could take months. It automatically scans all your files, identifies file content, assigns the correct category and classification levels, and then lets you determine the right safeguarding security.

Importance of Data Classification

The data “sensitivity level” dictates how you process and protect it. Even if you know data is important, you must assess its risks. The data classification process helps you discover potential threats and deploy cybersecurity solutions most beneficial for your business.

By assigning sensitivity levels and categorizing data, you understand the access rules surrounding critical data. You can monitor data better for potential data breaches and, most importantly, remain compliant. Compliance guidelines help you determine the proper cybersecurity controls, but you must perform a risk assessment and classify data first. Organizations often require a third party to help with data classification so that cybersecurity deployment can be more efficiently executed.

Accuracy of data classification is essential for future DLP strategies; therefore, many organizations, small and large, have turned to AI-driven automation. Artificial intelligence leverages machine-learning models to determine the proper classification level and category.

Data Classification Best Practices

Following data classification best practices makes policy creation and its entire process much more efficient. Best practices define the steps to fully index and label digital assets so that none are overlooked or mismanaged.

Organizations should follow these best practices:

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