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Why Data Classification is the Foundation of a Modern Data Protection Strategy

Picture of Mike Rotondo By  Mike Rotondo  ·  3 minute read

Understanding Data Classification & its growing importance in a rapidly evolving AI enabled digital world

What is Data Classification in Cybersecurity?

Primarily Data can be classified into these 5 high level classifications:

  • Public Data: can be accessed and used by anyone in the public domain
  • Private Data: This is data that is specific to the organization and for internal use only, if made public may or may not cause some harm to the organization.
  • Sensitive Data: This Data is further limited to specific department(s) of the organization and not available organization-wide. Data that falls under this type of classification may contain PII, Financial information of the organization, Patents, IPs & any Proprietary knowledge / trade secret(s).
  • Critical Data: This Data has to be identified and is protected under the law, failing to protect such data might attract fiscal penalties & fines. Some of the examples of such data would be:
    • PII (Personally identifiable Information): This may include information like Names, Contact Numbers, Social Security Numbers, Images & Pictures etc.
    • EHI (Electronic Health Information): This includes the Health records private to a particular personnel and may include PII as well attached to it.
    • Financial Information (Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, Transaction History etc.)
  • Restricted Data (or Highly Restricted Data):
     This is the highest protection tier. Access is strictly limited to specifically authorized individuals on a need-to-know basis. Exposure would cause severe legal, financial, regulatory, or national security impact. Handling, storage, transmission, and processing require the strongest controls and continuous monitoring.
    • Encryption master keys and root credentials
    • Biometric identifiers and genetic data
    • National security or defense data
    • Live production secrets and signing keys
    • M&A strategy documents before public disclosure
    • Zero day vulnerability details before patch release

Why is Data Classification Important?

    1. Meeting Statutory Compliances and Regulations: If your business collects and stores Critical Data, you have to make sure that such data is appropriately protected or you can incur heavy penalties and attract cumbersome lawsuits as well.
    2. Selective Sharing of Data: Contemplate a scenario where you have to share your IP data with one of your suppliers but not with others, you’d need to exactly classify and open up sharing permissions accordingly. Along with this you’d need meta data and contextual labeling as well precisely classifying data elements on a granular level.
  • Risk Mitigation Strategy: Preventing accidental data sharing by employees and restricting unauthorized access by malicious elements, specifically if those elements are inside the organization.
  • Better Visibility across Datasets: If you can’t see it, you can’t protect it. But contrary to popular belief Data Classification goes beyond just access control, it also involves using advanced heuristics to determine user behavior and track movement of data, which makes it a dynamic element of the entire cybersecurity framework.

To go about devising an effective data protection strategy, knowing & seeing the data is not enough you have to understand its complete lifecycle.

Here’s how a typical Data Lifecycle looks like across an organization from a high level process perspective:

  1. Discovery: Crucial first step, this involves understanding the Data being collected, its Movement & Intended Use.
  2. Categorize: This is where a high level sorting is done based on filetypes, usually low to no context is developed and tagged.
  3. Classify: Crucial step where the data is tagged, visual labels applied and extensive contextual information is developed to create a distinguished hierarchy of classification that provide granular info when needed and help in creating the best in breed controls.
  4. Protect: Once classified, appropriate security protocols can be developed and deployed for optimal data protection & proactive security.
  5. Analyze: Maintain oversight, track data movement and user behavior, specially useful in developing heuristics for Insider Risk Management.

Crafting optimal In-Depth Strategic Defence Frameworks:

  1. Information Protections enabled by Smart Classification:
    1. Sensitive Information type that might include Bank Account numbers, SSNs, critical financial Information etc.
    2. Exact Data Match: Exact keyword matching against specific databases for proactive threat detection
    3. OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Understanding what all files should be accessible for this kind of processing (non-sensitive PDF files etc.)
  2. Rights Management Service: This is the underlying but crucial layer that makes sure that security “follows” the file even after it leaves the organization’s controlled environment.
  3. Data Loss Prevention: Rules optimized for data protection not just look for suspicious keywords but also the flow of data, to identify the intended use.
  4. Insider Risk Management: This is the most advanced layer and focuses on monitoring the “User Intent”. This is especially critical with evolving AI technologies and rapidly increasing attack surfaces.
    1. Identifying Action Chain: This is where the system looks at what actions took place in a sequence and proactively deduces intended use.
    2. Preventing Data Seepage: Detects slow data leakages over the long term by actively logging action chain and deducing action chains.
    3. Adaptive Protection: This is where the Insider Risk Management system signals the Data Loss Prevention Engine to tighten the rules for a particular employee with increased risk probability.

Effective Cybersecurity begins with comprehensive and granular data classification, remember prevention is always better than cure. Classifying huge chunks of data sets or understanding where even to begin may seem overwhelming when new silos of data are being created on a daily basis.

Want to understand how to make sense of the data you are producing or collecting on a daily basis? Or are you looking to navigate a cybersecurity audit? Or simply trying to make yourself compliance ready?

Schedule a 30 Minute dedicated block with RITC Cybersecurity Experts here: https://ritcsecurity.com/contact