Introduction to data types

Get to know your data types page. A comprehensive view of the types of data across your Inventory.

Before using data types, make sure you have set up your inventory with data sources.

Why use data types?

Mapping out which data types (e.g., email address, phone number, etc.) are collected by each of your data sources is crucial to stay compliant in terms of the following:

Processing Activities: understand the purposes of processing for data types and identify any data types that are not used in processing activities to comply with GDPR data minimization
Request handling: To process data types for any DSR request, you first need to identify and locate data types
DPIA: Recognize sensitive data types to decide which processing activities require a DPIA
Risk management: Identify data types to recognize risky systems in terms of data sensitivity and PII

3 steps to mapping your data types

1. Context classification

2. Manual changes

3. Content discovery & deep dive - using Smart Scanning

1. Context based discovery - using suggestions by Mine

How does context based discovery work?

Mine leverages its ML capabilities to analyze the vendors’ privacy policy, supported features and your own business (size of company, industry etc.).How does it work: we analyze 3 inputs:

Auto-scan and analysis of legal documents (PP, tos, dpa)
Analyses of the data source capabilities and features
Analysis of your company (size, vertical, etc)

With these inputs we create a prediction of what data types are being processed in each data source.

To get context based discovery, click on the second step in your inventory setup. Upon doing so, Mine will automatically fill your Inventory with suggested data types.

Once the collection is done, you can eliminate any excessive data types and/or add more specific data types that are relevant to your company.

2. Viewing and modifying data types manually

To view or edit data types, head to your Data Inventory. and locate the system you'd like to view. Press "See all" under the "Data types" column (see below).

Note: If data types are not included in your column view, click on "Columns" and ensure "Data types" is selected in the "Displayed columns".

To add data types to a system, select "Add type" under the "Data types" component. Select from the available list.

There are 75 data types you can choose from. They are grouped into 10 (see below for grouping table). You can be as specific or as broad in terms of choosing data types.

For example you can choose "Demographics (other)" instead of choosing "Age" or "Gender"

To remove data types, hover over the data type you'd like to delete, and click "Remove".

Note: You cannot remove data types that have records since they were discovered using content discovery.

You can also view & edit data types from the Data types page. Here you can find a list of all unique data types as well as the systems and number of records per data type.

To view all systems per data type, click on the desired data type (e.g. Contact info).

The data type pane will display all systems that collect contact information.

Systems that have Content Discovery available & connected (Zendesk) will show the number of data type records per system. The pane will also display systems that have Content Discovery available (Google Drive).

Clicking on a specific system will lead you to the same system pane as from your Inventory.

3. Content discovery & deep dive

For increased accuracy and continuous discovery of data types in specific data sources (unstructured sources such as your drive, internal communication platforms etc..), you can set up integrations for content discovery.

Read more about content discover here.

Talk to us if you need any help with data types via our chat or at portal@saymine.com, and we'll be happy to assist!🙂