Classifications are governance artifacts that you can use to classify assets based on the level of sensitivity or confidentiality to your organization. They can be used like tags to control groupings of assets in your company. Unlike data classes which include logic to match data values, classifications are more like labels. You can assign one or more classifications at a column level.

IBM Knowledge Catalog includes the following predefined, commonly used classifications:

• Personal Information
• Personally Identifiable Information
• Sensitive Personal Information
• Confidential

You can decide to keep, change, or add your own classifications that are relevant to your organization.

For example, an organization may create classifications for Restricted Data, Private Data and Public Data according to their own corporate data security guidelines. To protect highly sensitive data, you can create a data protection rule in IBM Knowledge Catalog to block users from access to the data asset based on its asset classification.

In catalogs, a classification can describe the sensitivity of a whole data asset to help catalog members understand the asset. You can use classifications to describe business terms, data classes, reference data sets, and governance rules.

You choose the classification of an asset when you add the asset to a catalog from within a catalog. The classification is visible to all catalog members on the Overview tab of the asset.

You can change the classification of an asset by editing the asset if you meet one or more of these criteria:

• You are the owner of the asset.
• You are an asset member with the Editor role.
• You are a catalog member with the Admin role.

In data protection rules, you can include classifications in conditions to identify the type of data to restrict.

In governed catalogs, relational data assets are automatically profiled and assigned data classes. In ungoverned catalogs, you can choose to profile a relational data asset and choose which data classes to assign. All catalog users can see the data classes in the asset preview on the Overview and Profile pages of the asset.

You can include asset classifications and data classes in data protection rules to identify the type of data to control.

You can rename asset classifications and data classes by associating them with business terms that make sense for your organization.