5.12 Classification of information
Requires information to be classified according to the organisation's information security needs, judged on confidentiality, integrity and availability and on the requirements of relevant interested parties.
5
artefacts
0
held by a system
1
at each review
hard
to go live
Policy repository / GRC workspace
where the evidence lives
teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review
system holds itEvidence a system already holds
none for this control
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Evidence of how classification decisions are made and by whom, normally the information owner · Data governance / DLP tooling
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- The classification scheme, defining the levels and the criteria for each against confidentiality, integrity and availability · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Evidence the criteria account for the requirements of relevant interested parties, such as customers, regulators and contracts · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Classification applied to actual information assets in the inventory, not only defined in policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- The process for reviewing and reclassifying information as its value changes · Document repository
First move
This control is evidenced by people and documents, not systems. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date. Do not try to automate it.
Common gaps auditors find
- Scheme defined against confidentiality alone, so integrity and availability requirements are never expressed
- Classification never applied, leaving every downstream handling and access rule with no input
- Too many levels, so users default to the highest or to none
- Contractual and regulatory requirements not mapped, so information subject to specific obligations is classified as ordinary internal data
Do this for your whole sheet
Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.
Build my evidence sheet