by Angela Guess
Aberdeen Group Vice President and Research Fellow Derek Brink has composed a new report that “outlines the benefits to organizations of classifying data in order to effectively protect it. The report, entitled Does Your Enterprise Classify Its Data?, analyzes over five years of data loss prevention (DLP) research by Aberdeen, and concludes that data classification is a capability that is consistently linked with the best performing organizations in the area of data loss prevention.”
Brink stated, “Aberdeen’s research has consistently shown that there are several general steps which are associated with top performance when it comes to protecting sensitive enterprise data… These include identification and classification of your data – because you can’t protect what you don’t manage, and you can’t manage what you don’t know about.”
The report notes, “The majority of data loss or data exposure incidents are the result not of the malicious actions of outsiders, but of the inadvertent and well-intentioned actions of insiders. Most incidents are the result of basic human error and legitimate users who are simply focused on getting their jobs done.”
