Sensitive Data Discovery

discovery? what discovery?

TEXTA person tasked with data anonymization will try to understand what data s/he needs to address with masking. In other words, one would need to define sensitive data and find all that corresponds to that definition.

So, what does the terms "sensitive data" or "PII data" or "PHI data" means? The term stands for the data that describes a person in such a way so that with knowledge of the value of the elements of this data the person can be re-identified among other people.

For example, the knowledge of Social Security Number allows learning a lot of things about the person as it is used in multiple systems to uniquely identify the person. The SSN in the wrong hands can lead to false credit card applications, medical claims, public information about students. Stolen PII has a price on the black market for the very reason that it helps to commit fraud.

Thus, before masking activities even start, one has to find all the elements that have an ability to identify a person in a system. This process is called "sensitive data discovery"