“We’re looking for something simple, that’s complicated, easy for our customer care users but with more classifications for the legal team… oh, with headers and footers. Plus a PII option. Can this help with GDPR? What colour should the buttons be? Can we have tick boxes as well? We need to brand it and the Design Office use CAD”.
Quite a list, and it’s not rare. Some organisations start by needing “something simple”, quickly followed by a realisation that this is not necessarily quite true, and that there is the opportunity to do much more than initially thought.
Going through the process of gathering requirements and discussing individual departmental needs, and the processes driving them, is a great way to start the data classification journey. Some departments do just need a simple structure, but then often there are times as an organisation you want to assist your users, and guide them into making the right classification decision, adding to their knowledge. This is where helping your users by automating some classifications or suggesting a classification improvement really become powerful tools to your organisation.
Why restrict your users’ options when they know the value of their data best? 4 buttons on the ribbon? No problem. But how about giving users the option to add knowledge, retention information, DLP specific metadata and additional categories for regulatory reasons (PII and Sensitive PII, anyone)?
You can then take all this classification information your users are providing you with and use it to ensure any data loss is prevented; you know where your data is, that the data is accurately classified and only accessible by the right people. In light of upcoming, and current, regulations, this is something that will be crucial to business success in the long run. So just sometimes, simple but complicated can work to your organisation’s, and your users’, advantage.