Recently, I changed my job. I will have a separate post for this in the following days in the ‘Now’ section.
So, being in this probation-training period once again in my life, I found some fun in collating some training topics I learnt once again, with my personal life and seeing if I actually practice this training also privately.
In this blog post I decided to describe one of these cases of my trainings correlation with my private life. In particular I decided to see if I am compliant not only in my business life but also in my private life in regard to the Information I know and the way I may disclose it. Thankfully, my self-evaluation resulted in being very satisfying and compliant.
Information sensitivity is the control of access to information or knowledge that might result in loss of an advantage or level of security if disclosed to others. Loss, misuse, modification, or unauthorized access to sensitive information can adversely affect the privacy or welfare of an individual, trade secrets of a business or even the security and international relations of a nation depending on the level of sensitivity and nature of the information.
Most of times in the business sector the classification of Information according to the above definition falls to these 4 levels:
Level 1 - public: meaning any information that concerns the business and is publicly accessible through public websites, published information, press, etc)
Level 2 - internal: meaning all information that is internally in the business circulated and does not exist in Level 3 or Level 4.
Level 3 - confidential: meaning all information that can be accessed only within a group category of individuals.
Level 4 - secret: meaning all information that can be accessed and is restricted to specific, named individuals.
You can now change the word ‘business’ to the word ‘friend’, ‘individual’, ‘person’, or whatever and collate this to your personal life.
Now let’s see an exemplar correlation in my private life (simplified -a lot-).
Say that I have 2 best friends, A - Alice and B - Bob. Alice is my best school friend from my neighborhood and Bob is my best friend from my university studies.
Some background information that I am going to use in this example are the below.
- a. Alice and me were schoolmates,
b. Alice and me are members of the same school group of friends,
c. My best friend is Alice,
d. Alice’s best friend is me.- a. Bob and me were colleagues in university,
b. My best friend is Bob,
c. Bob’s best friend is me.- a. Chris and me were classmates,
b. Chris, Alice and me are members of the same school group of friends.- a. Dino and me were classmates.
In our personal lives we are involved in several different groups. Within these groups we share a lot of information and we also ‘produce’ a lot of information mostly based on our experiences together and our discussions. The same happens not only between us and groups, but also between us and individual members of the group. And of course, with just individuals that we are not connected via any group.
The information that is ‘produced’ within a group or between me and any individual can be classified to any of the above information sensitivity categories based on the severity/importance of the information and a lot of other rules not to be quoted in this blog post.
In each and every discussion we are involved, which information should we discuss and disclose and which information we should not. For an extended unfolding of this post I have created also an audio record which when I update my website with a podcast feature, I will include it and share the link also in this blog post. But for now, and in order not to have a very long post I will continue with some example topics collocated in a way as listed below:
Then I will conclude with some explanation of my thought on these results.
Information: Alice lives in the same neighborhood with me, we were classmates for 12 years during the school period, and we are the same age. During school years she was sitting in the desk behind me and we were both members of the school literature group.
Sensitivity: The above information could be classified as Level 1 or Level 2. The importance of the information shared is not that high and mostly this information can be described, if rephrased, as being about me and not about Alice. Most of Alice’s information could easily be inferred by the text’s context, e.g. since I have a schoolmate named Alice, it is very likely that we live in the same neighborhood and that we have the same age. Also, the fact that we were in the same school literature group theoretically is not of a very high importance, and this information I may need to disclose it to whoever, as for example we co-wrote together a poem about freedom.
Q1 a: Can I share this whole above information with my best friend Bob?
Q1 b: Can I share this whole above information with my group friend Chris?
Q1 c: Can I share this whole above information with my schoolmate Dino?
Information: Alice lives on Samplestreet 20, 1432, Athens. She was a good student and her grades were above 18/20 for as long as I remember. Her birthday is on 01.01.1989. Her school love was Chris for 4 years and it was obvious to all my classmates. At the age of 15 she was diagnosed with a serious health problem that she shared within our school group of friends. At the age of 18 Alice shared with me only, that she broke up with Chris because she didn’t like her relationship anymore, but her excuse to Chris was that she was going to study abroad (as she did) and that she didn’t want to have a long-distance relationship.
Sensitivity: The above information could be classified as Level 2, 3 and 4. The importance of the information shared is much more sensitive than the one in Topic 1. Some parts of this information can be classified as internal knowledge within the school, some other can be classified as classified within Alice’s group of friends, and some other as secret between individuals.
Q2 a. Can I share this whole above information with my best friend Bob?
Q2 b. Can I share and discuss this whole above information with my group friend Chris?
Q2 c. Can I share and discuss this whole above information with Dino?
Say now that next year I may become best friends with Dino. The topic content is the same as Topic 2.
Sensitivity: Same as described in Topic 2.
Q3. Can I now share and discuss this whole above information with Dino?
Finally, taking again Topic 2 content, say now that Alice discloses to Chris the truth (with all the details that I also know) of her breaking up with Chris.
Sensitivity: Same as described in Topic 2, but for the case of the secret that Alice shared with me now the sensitivity is remaining the same (Level 4), but the restricted individuals knowing this secret is changed and Chris was granted with Level 4 information access, while before he had Level 3.
Q4 a. Can I now share and discuss this whole above information with Chris?
Q4 b. Can I now share and discuss this whole above information with the rest of my school group of friends that me, Chris and Alice are involved?
Relationships are very complex and of course people can be involved in more groups and have different kind of relationships amongst them. Nevertheless, always be aware of what type of information you are disclosing about other people, and especially if those people are completely strangers to the person about whom you are disclosing this information. Probably, you should disclose almost no information to them that can be classified as Level 2,3 or 4. Take for example Alice and Bob… Alice and Bob, they are both my best friends, but for this example’s sake they have never met and they are not involved in any common group of people. They are complete strangers. So, Alice should not know any personal information of Bob and vise-versa.
Finally, we should be aware that during the time passing, years, months, days, information may change level of classification by losing importance or becoming available to more people by the ones who produce this information. What’s more, also individuals change classification levels within group of people and may go from Level 2 to Level 3, but also the opposite! So always bear in mind at each time period what information you are classified to share and to whom you are allowed to disclose it.
Credits: The above used image was taken by this interesting article that concerns the Six Degrees of Separation, another interesting information for you to know :)