Planning Data Security Deployment > Analyzing network structure

Analyzing network structure

Applies to

Data Security v7.6.x

In this topic

Overview

Structural guidelines

Overview

To best employ data security, you need to analyze your network structure, determine the location of confidential information, note which documents need to be protected and where they are located, and whether you need to make changes to the network directory structure in order to group documents differently for security purposes.

In most organizations, user rights have been determined and built into the network directory structure, according to your organization's logic. You may conclude that the network configuration is fine as it is, or that the internal network definitions change to some degree due to today's higher security needs.

Any changes you need to implement internally in the directory structure should be implemented with these increased security measures in mind.

Structural guidelines

It is possible to configure the system so that a particular user cannot access a certain document through the network, but can receive the document by email. For example, a manager would not want employees to access documents in his or her personal folder, but would want to be able to send the documents to them by email. It is therefore important that you perform this analysis together with the network administrator, so that your desired changes will be implemented internally in a smooth, logical fashion, as well as within the Websense structure.

Typically, your network directories are organized functionally, according to the different business units in the company. Within this structure, functional groups are usually entitled to look at documents within their business unit.

We recommended that you use this as your process map:

Take a network map of all the directories, and look at how the network access is organized

Determine what types of classified documents you have, and where they are located

Determine whether documents of similar confidentiality are together in similar directories

Organize/group information that is critical to your organization and information whose security is legally mandated. For example, financial institutions may start by considering customer data (such as Social Security numbers or account numbers) and highly confidential business information

Organize/group important proprietary and confidential information with medium or low change-frequency

Arrange all major information assets within your organization so that you understand data locations, relationships and security-value hierarchies

The result of this analysis should be a table corresponding to the directories in the network that need to be protected, indicating what types of users should be able to receive those files and to provide a look at access issues.

You may want to rearrange some areas of your network access, and set the data security accordingly. See below for recommended procedures.

Planning Data Security Deployment > Analyzing network structure