Sensitive data is information that can cause serious damage to individuals or organizations if it falls into the wrong hands. It's essential to identify and protect sensitive data to avoid breaches, discrimination, privacy infringements, and financial and legal risks for organizations that handle it.
Sensitive data is information that has particular value to a person, company or organization, and which needs protection against unauthorized access or abuse.
This data can include personal, financial, medical, or legal information, as well as any other information considered confidential or private.
It can also include business information such as product plans, marketing strategies, client lists or trade secrets.
Protecting sensitive data has become a major concern for organizations with the increasing digitization of data and growing cybersecurity threats.
Here are a few examples of sensitive data for organizations:
● Financial information: Bank accounts, credit card information, and billing and tax-related data are considered sensitive data.
● Employee personal information: Personal information about employees such as addresses, social security numbers, telephone numbers, medical information and information about their employment.
● Customer information: Names, addresses, phone numbers and payment information
● Intellectual property: Patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets are considered sensitive data.
● Contract and business partner information: NDAs, business terms and contact information are also considered sensitive data.
Classifying sensitive data is the process of identifying and sorting data according to their level of sensitivity. This ensures the appropriate security policies and access controls are in place to protect them.
There are many different methods for classifying sensitive data, but here are three levels currently used in organizations:
● Low: Used for public or non-sensitive data that can be shared without restriction. This could include company brochures, advertisements, newsletters or non-confidential financial reports.
● Medium: Used for confidential data that needs to be protected against unauthorized disclosure. This could include personal, financial or legal data, product plans or customer data.
● High: Used for highly sensitive data requiring maximum protection against unauthorized disclosure. This could include IP documents, trade secrets, national security information or health data.
According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), sensitive personal data is information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.
GDPR requires organizations to get the explicit consent of data subjects before handling their sensitive personal data. Consent must be granted in a way that is freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.
Organizations must also show that appropriate security measures have been implemented to keep that data safe.
There are also exceptions where processing sensitive personal data is authorized without the explicit consent of the data subject.
It is important to note that organizations must be able to justify and demonstrate that their handling of sensitive data complies with the GDPR requirements, and they must put appropriate security measures in place to keep that data safe.
The difference between these two types of data is the nature of the information they contain. Personal data is information which could be used to identify a person, whereas sensitive personal data reveals intimate or private information about someone.
GDPR pays specific attention to sensitive personal data, requiring a higher level of protection for this data than for other personal data.
Organizations must receive explicit consent from data subjects before collecting, using or storing such data, and implement enhanced security measures to protect it against any loss, unauthorized access or abuse.
Any organization that handles sensitive data must make special effort to secure and protect that data. It's not only a matter of law, but also key to maintaining trust with customers and business partners. Here are some measures a company can put in place to protect its sensitive data:
● Identify Sensitive Data: Undergoing any significant IT transformation is inherently disruptive—and the adoption of cloud has been no exception. Indeed, organizations that implement cloud technologies face massive data fragmentation that makes it more difficult to know where sensitive data resides. It's important to document the precise location of sensitive data to meet regulatory requirements, while avoiding financial penalties and preventing ransomware.
● Emphasize Employee Training: Employees should be trained to identify security threats, such as phishing attacks, malware and security breaches, and to understand security policies and operational procedures. that are designed to protect sensitive data.
● Manage User Access: Organizations must implement policies and procedures around access management, and adopt technologies such as multifactor authentication (MFA), complex passwords and user activity monitoring to protect data against unauthorized access.
● Encrypt data: Data encryption must be strategically deployed throughout the IT estate to protect data at rest and in-transit. Companies need to consider how encrption can be applied to every piece of data in their possession—on-premises or in the cloud—to protect confidentiality in the event of a security breach.
● Control Data Transfer: Data transfer must be controlled, monitored and encrypted to avoid any leak.
● Assess Suppliers and Partners: Organizations must ensure the suppliers and partners that have access to sensitive data meet the appropriate security standards.
Rubrik specializes in managing and protecting sensitive data.
Our solutions are designed to help organizations protect their sensitive data, including:
● Recovery: Rubrik’s fast data backup and recovery solutions reduce downtime in the event of a disaster or security incident.
● Sensitive Data Management: Rubrik helps organizations manage their sensitive data easily with research, analysis and data classification tools.
● Regulatory compliance: Rubrik helps organizations comply with data protection regulations—such as GDPR and CCPA—with data encryption, access control and logging features.
● Data security: Rubrik’s advanced security features, such as threat detection, log file monitoring and two-factor authentication, protect sensitive data against internal and external security threats.
Rubrik Security Cloud detects, classifies and reports on sensitive data with no impact on production. It can help:
● Reduce sensitive data exposure
● Reduce the risk of a bad actor exfiltrating your organization's sensitive data