Sensitive Information: What It Is and How to Protect It

Sensitive information is data that needs protection because it could negatively impact the privacy, welfare, assets, or security of an individual or organization if it is lost, misused, modified, or accessed by an unauthorized person or group of people.

Types of Sensitive Information

Sensitive information is generally broken down into three main categories:

1. Personal Information

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is data that can be traced back to an individual. If that individual’s personal information is disclosed or leaked, it could result in some form of harm to that person. Examples of PII include:

• Social security numbers
• Passport numbers
• Driver’s license numbers
• Taxpayer ID numbers
• Patient identification numbers
• Credit card numbers
• Address details
• Email addresses
• Contact numbers
• Financial account numbers

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Other examples of PII that are less dangerous if exposed include salary and wage details, academic reports and achievements, medical reports, and lab results. As such, it is absolutely critical that you use the necessary security practices to protect PII.

2. Business Information

Sensitive business information is any information that could damage the organization if leaked. Examples of this include trade secrets, details of upcoming mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, financial data, new products, or new service strategies.

3. Classified Information

Classified information is sensitive data kept by the government. This data can be broken down into further subcategories:

• Sensitive
• Confidential
• Secret
• Top secret

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Importance of Protecting Sensitive Information

It is important to protect sensitive information because there are threats everywhere. Not only are there malicious threats on the outside of an organization, but there are also sometimes disgruntled employees on the inside of an organization that you need to protect against too.

If your personal information is not adequately protected, you could end up with a bad credit rating. A bad credit rating can negatively affect your ability to buy a car or a house. If your business’s sensitive information is leaked, it could tarnish your reputation to such an extent that the future stability of your business is affected. People could even lose their jobs and livelihoods. On a classified level, leaked government information could ignite political upheavals and instability. All in all, sensitive information, as its name suggests, can cause harm on many levels.

Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Here are six steps you can take to protect your sensitive information:

1. Make sure your security controls are set according to the sensitivity level of your information.
2. You need to know and understand who can access, change, or delete all your sensitive information.
3. Put together a comprehensive data classification policy.
4. Complete a risk analysis to identify sensitive information that is collected and stored and tag this information by applying labels. This process should be an ongoing project.
5. Regularly scan your data to identify sensitive information.
6. Make sure your sensitive information is stored in designated locations that only authorized users have access to.

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Information security can take the form of physical and electronic security, both of which are important when it comes to sensitive information. Physical security covers the physical devices you have that store data that could be stolen or damaged. Electronic security includes firewalls and encryption—any electronic software used to secure and protect data.

Security Methods

These are just a few of the more common methods used to secure sensitive information:

• Audit any changes that occur in your systems This includes attempts to access sensitive data. For example, take note of accounts that have had many failed login attempts.
• Implement access control on sensitive data Only authorized employees should be permitted to access data. Always make sure that employees who leave service have their access taken away. New employees should be trained before being allowed to access sensitive information.
• Implement a data loss prevention solution These systems monitor workstations, servers, and networks to ensure sensitive data is not deleted, copied, or moved to a new location. This system monitors users to pick up on unauthorized actions.
• Invest in an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) These systems inspect network traffic and raise red flags when they pick up on possible malicious activity.
• Install antivirus software Keep updating the software since new viruses and malware are developed daily.
• Implement a backup and recovery solution This method is key when data is lost, deleted, changed, or altered.

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Struggling to understand the GDPR regulations? Read our guide to ensuring GDPR compliance.