Information Classification – CompTIA Security+ SY0-401: 2.6


Not all data has the same level of classification. In this video, you’ll learn about some common data classifications such as unclassified, confidential, and secret.

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Not all data has the same sensitivity. There’s a big difference between publicly available data that you might find on the internet and personal private information that you might keep close to home. In fact, you could see that internal documents and customer data and inventions that might be used to patent information all may have different sensitivities associated with them.

It’s very common then to create classifications that we can then apply to different types of data. So you might seek confidential or top secret, or unclassified, or internal use only. And we can take those labels and apply those labels to types of data that we might have inside of our organization. We can then apply different permissions based on what those classifications might be.

Unclassified data might be public data. This might be something that would be available publicly on our website. And there generally aren’t any restrictions for anyone to view that particular data. This is different than for instance, classified data, which would be private data, or restricted, or internal use only. This certainly has restricted access and it may require that someone sign a non-disclosure agreement to even gain access to view that data.

Confidential data is generally classified on the lower end. But this is still sensitive information and you generally have to have approval to gain access to it. The next step up then would be secret. And that’s more of a medium level classification, where you are even restricting the amount of access to that data even further. And the highest level of classification might be considered top secret, where you have to have the highest level of access to view that data.