CHAPTER 10, PART 2

SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED (SBU) INFORMATION PROTECTION

1 BACKGROUND

The United States Department of Agriculture houses and processes all types of sensitive data, including information relating to the privacy of US citizens, payroll and financial transactions, proprietary information and life/mission critical data.  It is essential that this information be properly handled, stored and protected from the risk and magnitude of loss or harm that could result from inadvertent or deliberate disclosure, alteration or destruction.  The Information Categories Chart in Table 1 gives some examples of different types of Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information that is the focus of this section.  SBU information also includes Sensitive Security Information (SSI).  However the SBU category contains information that is not security related but is still sensitive in terms of its risk of exposure.