How to Efficiently Identify and Prioritize Sensitive Data

The average office worker spends a typical day primarily accessing data that isn’t all that sensitive, but there certainly can be a lot of it – and even seemingly innocuous documents can contain information that shouldn’t be exposed. For example, it might sound harmless to send planning notes for an employee appreciation gift to an unsecured email inbox or device. But what if these notes contain the names, birthdates and/or physical addresses of people at your company? This is Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and data privacy regulations impose requirements for how you can use it.

Sensitive data requires visibility and control

Visibility and control over all kinds of sensitive data are foundational to any robust data security strategy. Without a clear understanding of where sensitive data resides, who has access to it and how it is being used, organizations are at a significant risk of data breaches and compliance failures. 

Fortunately, identifying the sensitive data that your organization holds and prioritizing its security don’t have to be overly complicated or time-consuming. Starting with our preferred data security framework, we’ll explain the workflows and solutions available to make finding and protecting sensitive data go smoothly.

The Forcepoint Data Security Everywhere framework

Forcepoint has developed the “Data Security Everywhere” framework to offer a flexible and comprehensive approach to securing sensitive data across its lifecycle. The framework consists of five key steps:

1- Discover: Identify where sensitive data resides within the organization
2- Classify: Categorize data based on its sensitivity and risk to operations
3- Prioritize: Focus data security efforts on the most critical data
4- Remediate: Address identified vulnerabilities and risks
5- Protect: Ensure continuous protection of intellectual property and regulated data

This framework is designed to adapt to technological and legal developments, providing organizations with the flexibility needed to respond to new threats and compliance mandates. Here we’re going to focus on those first three steps to examine how to efficiently identify and prioritize sensitive data wherever it can be found.

Identifying sensitive data with data discovery and classification

Efficiently identifying sensitive data within an organization begins with comprehensive data discovery. This calls for using a tool that can rapidly scan data-at-rest across various repositories, endpoints and cloud environments. Organizations can employ data discovery to uncover hidden or “dark” data that may reside outside official channels. Data discovery provides a holistic view of the data landscape, enabling security teams to understand where sensitive information is stored and how it flows through different systems.

Once data is discovered, the next step is data classification. This involves categorizing data based on pre-defined criteria such as sensitivity, regulatory requirements and business value. AI-driven classification tools can analyze the discovered data, assigning labels that indicate its level of sensitivity and handling requirements. Continuous monitoring further enhances this process by shining a light on data-in-use, ensuring that sensitive information is consistently identified and protected as it moves through the organization. Together, data discovery and classification provide a robust foundation for managing and securing sensitive data, enabling organizations to proactively address risks and maintain compliance.

How to efficiently prioritize sensitive data

After discovering and classifying data, you can begin to prioritize based on the data's sensitivity and the potential impact of its loss or exposure. Prioritization involves identifying high-risk data and focusing resources on protecting it. This approach ensures that the most critical data receives the highest level of protection, while less sensitive data is managed with appropriate but less intensive security measures. 

Effective prioritization involves aligning data protection efforts with business objectives. By understanding the value of different data assets to the organization, security teams can make informed decisions about where to allocate resources and how to balance security with operational efficiency. This decision-making can be aided by detailed data risk assessments and by tools for managing allocation of security resources.

Forcepoint solutions for Data Security Everywhere

Forcepoint offers a suite of products with unified visibility and control designed to provide comprehensive protection for data across its lifecycle, wherever it is accessed.

•  Data Security Posture Management (DSPM): The DSPM solution offered by Forcepoint leverages AI Mesh technology to discover and classify sensitive data with precision. It provides extensive visibility for data-at-rest across both cloud and on-premises environments, enabling organizations to identify high-risk data and proactively remediate vulnerabilities.
• Data Detection and Response (DDR): Available as an add-on for DSPM, Forcepoint DDR offers continuous monitoring and dynamic response capabilities applied to data-in-use to detect and prevent data breaches. Utilizing AI-powered classification, DDR enhances data context and reduces mean time to detection by monitoring file sharing, renaming and movement.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Forcepoint DLP safeguards sensitive information by monitoring, detecting and blocking unauthorized data transfers across networks, endpoints and cloud environments. In addition to this industry-leading protection for data-in-motion, DLP simplifies compliance with out-of-the-box policies for over 80 countries, ensuring that organizations can protect regulated data effectively.
  
  With these integrated security solutions, organizations can efficiently identify and prioritize sensitive data, putting you in the optimal position to prevent costly data breaches or to respond effectively to a breach in progress. Coverage for different data types and storage locations lets you be confident in knowing where all your sensitive data is and how you can protect it.
  
  Talk to an expert to try out a Forcepoint solution or to learn more about how we can serve your unique data security needs.