Netwrix Data Classification: Discover, classify, and protect sensitive data

Q: What is data classification software?

Data classification solutions help organizations identify, classify, and protect sensitive and business-critical information by assigning labels based on data type and sensitivity. Organizations save time and costs by automating the data discovery and classification process across IT environments (including structured or unstructured, on-premises or in the cloud).

Q: What are the 4 types of data classification?

The four most common types of data classification include: Public – Information that can be shared freely without risk, such as your organization’s contact details or cookie policy. Internal – Information meant to be used internally but has low sensitivity, like business processes or general operational documentation. Confidential – Information requiring more protection, such as vendor contracts, competitor analysis, or employee performance reviews. Restricted/Highly Confidential – Highly sensitive data that could cause serious financial, operational, or legal harm if exposed, such as intellectual property, custom applications, or healthcare records.

Q: How is Netwrix Data Classification licensed?

Netwrix Data Classification is licensed on a subscription basis, per employee, and determined by the number of data sources classified.

Q: Do you use agents to collect data?

No. Netwrix Data Classification operates in agentless mode, so it does not interfere with your data storage system. All index and classification information is collected, analyzed, stored, and updated on a separate server.

Q: Can Netwrix Data Classification be integrated with DLP or IRM solutions?

Yes. The data classification solution from Netwrix embeds classification information right into the file, increasing the accuracy of data loss prevention (DLP) or information rights management (IRM) tools and optimizing your data security efforts. Also, Netwrix Data Classification can apply Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) labels to documents.

Netwrix data classification combines sensitive data discovery with ROT data analysis so you can find what matters, understand the risk, and take action with confidence.

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Data classification

Find it. Classify it. Fix it.

Discover and classify sensitive data automatically

Continuously scan file systems, databases, email, and cloud repositories to identify sensitive and regulated data using predefined and custom taxonomies.

Reduce your attack surface with ROT data cleanup

Identify redundant, obsolete, and trivial data across your environment and take action to remove unnecessary exposure before it becomes a liability.

Assess and prioritize risk

Evaluate data based on sensitivity and exposure so your team knows where to focus remediation efforts first.

Remediate automatically

Move sensitive files to secure locations, remove excessive permissions, and redact confidential content without manual intervention.

Report on compliance with confidence

Generate reports aligned to GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS from a single platform, without hunting across systems at audit time.

Capabilities

From detection to remediation in minutes

Data classification software that detects, classifies, and manages sensitive data with less effort across your entire IT infrastructure.

See where sensitive data lives

Know what's triggering your classifiers

Your data risk at a glance

Track classification activity in real time

See for yourself

Ready to get started?

Solutions

Go beyond single-threat protection. Secure every angle with Netwrix solutions.

AD CS Security

Certificate-based attacks bypass credentials, escalate privileges, and persist undetected. Netwrix stops them before they start.

Access certification

Access request delegation

Access reviews and compliance

Active Directory security

Identify, detect, respond to, and recover from Active Directory threats

Automate user and group management

Automated lifecycle workflows

Data Security Posture Management

Discover and classify data in hybrid environments. Assess, prioritize, and mitigate risks to sensitive data.

Data access governance

Directory Management

Simplify and secure directory operations by cutting down on complexity, risk, and manual effort.

Eliminate privileged account sprawl

Endpoint Management

Secure endpoints and prevent data loss while keeping teams productive — no matter where they work.

Endpoint Privilege Management

Enforce strong passwords

Entitlement management

Group lifecycle management

Identity Management

Secure every identity, streamline every process, and stay ahead of compliance — without adding complexity.

Identity Threat Detection & Response

Stay ahead of identity-based threats — proactively remediate risks, block attacks, and ensure rapid recovery.

Identity risk detection and analysis

Implement zero-standing privileges

M365 Copilot readiness

Make group lifecycle and access management easy

Managed Service Providers

Secure, enhance and profit from your Microsoft investment with multi-tenant security and risk management from Netwrix.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures

Accelerate secure business transitions with Netwrix identity and data security solutions

Microsoft 365 Security

Gain visibility, reduce risk, and keep Microsoft 365 secure without slowing productivity

Non-Human Identities Defense

Detect and contain misuse of non-human identities

On-premise deployment with Netwrix

Maintain full control and compliance with Netwrix for on-premise deployment

Privilege Discovery and Cleanup

Privileged Access Management

Shrink your attack surface by killing standing privileges, locking down credentials, and monitoring privileged sessions.

ROT data management and cleanup

Discover, classify, and control sensitive and ROT data across your environment. Identify risk, reduce exposure, and take action with clear visibility and automated remediation.

Regulatory Compliance

Demonstrate compliance with hundreds of global regulations through unified visibility and automated evidence collection.

Session monitoring and audit readiness

Shadow AI security

Secure, enhance and profit from your Microsoft investment with multi-tenant security and risk management from Netwrix.

Third-party vendor access

Workforce password management

Replace shared spreadsheets and shadow vaults with centralized, end-to-end encrypted storage and secure team sharing, fully controlled by IT.

Zero trust security

Implement a Zero Trust framework across data and identity to reduce the risk of lateral movement and enforce least privilege.

Trusted by professionals

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"Even if you enforce least privilege and trust your employees as much as we do, you still need to know exactly who did what, when and where… that is what Netwrix can tell me, and it is giving me peace of mind."

John Bayes

IT Director, Hull College

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"Our experience has been wonderful. We use it in conjunction with Netwrix Auditor. Data Classification has allowed us to gain valuable drive space back by showing us "old" files that no longer need to be accessed daily, as well as helping us identify folders that may contain patient info and therefore require an audit of the security applied to them."

Mike S.

System Engineer, Hospital & Health Care

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"Reporting for this tool is better than any other in the space in my opinion. Most PII scans are hard to read, this is not and it saves us time"

Anonymous

Systems Engineering Manager, IT Services

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"... We needed a simple way to identify and classify data. Netwrix Data Classification has all the basics that you need to identify where PCI/PII data is being stored in the environment. They have classification dictionaries for pretty much everything."

Anonymous

IT Manager, Insurance

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Integrations

Seamless integrations for smarter security

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AI spotlight: AI Knows No Boundaries: Governing Data Access Before It's Too Late

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Data Access Governance

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Netwrix 1Secure: unify data and identity security to enable safe AI adoption

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Data Security Posture Management

Data classification FAQs

Have questions? We’ve got answers.

What is data classification software?

What are the 4 types of data classification?

The four most common types of data classification include:

Public – Information that can be shared freely without risk, such as your organization’s contact details or cookie policy.
Internal – Information meant to be used internally but has low sensitivity, like business processes or general operational documentation.
Confidential – Information requiring more protection, such as vendor contracts, competitor analysis, or employee performance reviews.
Restricted/Highly Confidential – Highly sensitive data that could cause serious financial, operational, or legal harm if exposed, such as intellectual property, custom applications, or healthcare records.

How is Netwrix Data Classification licensed?

Do you use agents to collect data?

How easy is the deployment and configuration process? How quickly will I start getting value?

It takes only a couple of hours to deploy Netwrix Data Classification. The time required for the initial classification depends on your data volume, connection speed, the classification mode you choose, server performance, and other factors. After that, new data will be indexed incrementally, which is faster.

The solution provides a wide set of predefined taxonomies that cover PII (GDPR), PHI (HIPAA), payment card data (PCI DSS), financial records, and other types of protected information, so you can quickly find sensitive and regulated data and implement required security controls.

Can Netwrix Data Classification be integrated with DLP or IRM solutions?

How do the files get classified?

Our data classification tool doesn’t just match character strings and rely on keywords and regular expressions, unlike many other information classification tools. It also uses compound term processing and statistical analysis, which work in any language or vocabulary, regardless of grammatical style. The classification is performed by analyzing file content using rules defined in the taxonomies.

Netwrix Data Classification: Discover, classify, and protect sensitive data

Find it. Classify it. Fix it.

Discover and classify sensitive data automatically

Reduce your attack surface with ROT data cleanup

Assess and prioritize risk

Remediate automatically

Report on compliance with confidence

Capabilities

From detection to remediation in minutes

Ready to get started?

Solutions

Go beyond single-threat protection. Secure every angle with Netwrix solutions.

Trusted by professionals

Don’t just take our word for it

Integrations

Seamless integrations for smarter security

Let’s talk security

Featured resources

Geek out with us

AI spotlight: AI Knows No Boundaries: Governing Data Access Before It's Too Late

Netwrix 1Secure: unify data and identity security to enable safe AI adoption

Data classification FAQs

Have questions? We’ve got answers.

See Data Classification in action