ABSTRACT
Data protection is an umbrella term that encompasses multiple information disciplines, including storage, backup and recovery, and systems and application administration. This chapter focuses on why data classification is imperative for the purposes of building a holistic and successful data protection strategy. Data classification, regardless of how formally it is done within an environment, provides the baseline metrics required for data protection and ultimately assists in identifying data by five fundamental questions about data what is the data? Where is the data? Who uses the data? When is the data used? How is the data used? A variety of factors, including data growth, data use, and data locality, mean that it's absolutely critical for businesses to focus more on data protection policies that encompass all aspects of data protection storage, replication, backup/recovery, and regeneration. Achieving adequate data requires a more centralized approach and a broader understanding of the classification of data within the organization.
