Privacy ontology for identifying and classifying personally identifiable information and a related GUI

A method of providing an association between a system's meta-tagged data objects and a list of terms, the association indicating which objects are and are not covered by a given policy, comprising:

• obtaining a list of terms and a policy, the policy including at least one rule, the at least one rule including one or more of the terms, the terms including:
• a user category, an action, and a data category, the user category indicating at least one applicable user for the at least one rule, the action specifying at least one application that is either permitted or denied by the at least one rule, the data category indicating a type of data object that is governed by the at least one rule;
• identifying a plurality of meta-tags used in a system;
• developing one or more mappings between the terms and the meta-tags;
• identifying system data objects in the system having one or more meta-tags;
• creating an ontology of the system data objects, the ontology setting a level of abstraction of the system data objects, the level of abstraction of the system data objects including:
• de-identifying information in the system data objects and identifying partial information in the system data objects;
• creating for each meta-tag of each system data object identified, an association between the system data object and the one or more terms to which the meta-tag is mapped, the association indicating whether the system data object is or is not covered by the policy by determining whether there exists the at least one rule in the policy whose term for the user category matches a user of the system data object, whose term for the action matches an access right of the system data object, and whose term of the data category matches a full name of the system data object;
• and
• in response to finding that the system data object is covered by the policy, providing the system data object according to the covered policy and the level of abstraction set in the ontology of the system data object.