3.3 Data types and classifications

Question 1

Data types

Answer 1

Regulated
–Managed by a third-party
–Government laws and statutes
* Trade secret
–An organization’s secret formulas
–Often unique to an organization
* Intellectual property
–May be publicly visible
–Copyright and trademark restrictions
* Legal information
–Court records and documents, judge and attorney
information, etc.
–PII and other sensitive details
–Usually stored in many different systems
* Financial information
–Internal company financial details
–Customer financials
–Payment records
–Credit card data, bank records, etc.
* Human-readable
–Humans can understand the data
–Very clear and obvious
* Non-human readable
–Not easily understood by humans
–Encoded data
–Barcodes
–Images
* Some formats are a hybrid
–CSV, XML, JSON, etc.

Question 2

Classifying sensitive data

Answer 2

• Not all data has the same level of categorization
  –License tag numbers vs. health records
• Different levels require different security and handling
  –Additional permissions
  –A different process to view
  –Restricted network access

Question 3

Data classifications

Answer 3

• Proprietary
  –Data that is the property of an organization
  –May also include trade secrets
  –Often data unique to an organization
• PII - Personally Identifiable Information
  –Data that can be used to identify an individual
  –Name, date of birth, mother’s maiden name,
  biometric information
• PHI - Protected Health Information
  –Health information associated with an individual
  –Health status, health care records, payments for
  health care, and much more

Sensitive - Intellectual property, PII, PHI
* Confidential - Very sensitive, must be approved to view
* Public / Unclassified - No restrictions on viewing the data
* Private / Classified / Restricted
–Restricted access, may require an NDA
* Critical - Data should always be available