Data categories in Safetica 10

If you wish to protect specific data in your company, you need to classify them first. This article outlines several approaches to do that.

 

Data categories help you classify files into different groups depending on who, where, and how can work with them. You can use them in DLP policies and data discovery tasks, and thus secure sensitive data. Data categories are available in Safetica Management Console in Protection > Data categories.

Safetica 10 offers four types of data categories:

• Sensitive content - set up rules for searching the content of files.
• File properties - protect files based on their file attributes (e.g. file extensions).
• Existing classification (metadata) - you are already using a third-party tool to classify sensitive data.
• Context rules - when your files cannot be specified by their content.

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1.  Classification based on sensitive content

Supported on both Windows and macOS.

Specify what data is considered sensitive in your company and protect files which contain it (personal information, credit card numbers, internal know-how expressions, etc.)

You can specify dictionaries, pre-defined algorithms, keywords, or regular expressions which will be searched for inside company files.

Data categories defined by sensitive content also allow you to run discovery tasks, which can scan data on selected endpoints and provide reports on found files with sensitive content.

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2.  Data categorized by file properties

Supported on both Windows and macOS.

This approach allows you to protect files based on their properties (such as file extensions).

DLP rules for data classified by file properties can be applied to:

• Individual file types (.cad, .pdf, etc.) or file type categories (Presentation, Image Files, Spreadsheet Files, etc.)
• File types incompatible with Safetica sensitive data detection (Safetica currently supports sensitive data detection in these formats: : TXT, XML, HTML, RTF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, XLSM, ZIP, CSV, PDF)
• File types incompatible with Safetica metadata technology (read more about file types that can be classified with metadata here)

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3.  Using existing classification

Not supported on macOS yet.

This approach assumes that you have already classified your data with a third-party classification solution, and you want to protect these pre-classified files. Pre-classified files may be identified using tags, metadata, or another type of file label.

For each of your classification groups or labels, we recommend creating a separate Safetica data category, and specify the classification's proper format.

Existing classification has the following limitations:

• supported DLP policies: external devices, cloud drives, virtual print, print, clipboard, screen capture, network, local paths
• supported applications: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Outlook, Adobe Reader DC, Foxit Reader, Notepad, Safetica-supported web browsers

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4.  Classification based on context rules

Not supported on macOS yet.

The expert context rules allow you to define data by:

• the application from which they originated,
• the website from which they originated,
• the path where they are stored.

The configuration of this approach is resource intensive, and the effort required to test, deploy, troubleshoot, and maintain a context DLP increases significantly with the size of the environment and the complexity of security policies. Therefore, we do not recommended using this as the primary approach to DLP. Rather have it cover only incomplete or atypical use cases.

 

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