Class

Almost every time I mention the subject of “data classification” to a customer, their face goes white, their palms get sweaty, and they take three steps backward clutching their chest. Ok, that was a tad bit dramatic, but you get the idea. Just thinking about the effort involved in classifying the plethora of data held by the organization is enough to give most IT folks heart palpitations. One IT Director I worked with was previously employed at an Intelligence Service (I will not reveal which one it was). He noted that they had an entire department of roughly 200 people, whose sole job it was to classify and tag data. I do not know of too many organizations who can afford to have an entire department dedicated to this task. However, data classification is not just for intelligence agencies. It is central to the daily operation of a digital security program.