Data Catalogue

Last updated: May 12, 2026

1. Overview of the Data Catalogue and Its Purpose

  1. The Data Catalogue serves as a unified, system-wide inventory of sensitive data entity templates that the Matters.ai platform uses to scan, identify, and classify data across customer data stores and cloud environments.

  2. It gives authoritative visibility into what data exists and how sensitive that data is.

  3. The catalogue underpins automated classification, lineage, governance and risk-reduction activities for security, compliance and data teams.

2. Data Elements: Concept and Role

  1. Definition: A Data Element is the most granular, identifiable unit of data (for example: Email Address, Employee ID, Account Number).

  2. Purpose: Data Elements allow Matters to:

    • Provide fine-grained visibility into sensitivity and regulatory impact of individual attributes.

    • Classify and tag data consistently across systems and storage.

    • Enforce security controls, data minimisation and least-privilege access at the field level.

    • policy enforcement, risk analysis

3. Data Element Management in the Matters Console

When working in the Matters Console you can, for each Data Element:

  1. Assign a Country : link the element to a country for regulatory or geographical relevance.

  2. Set Sensitivity Severity:choose one of: Critical, High, Medium, Low. This defines protection and governance level.

  3. Enable or Disable the Data Element:

    • Enabled: platform actively monitors and classifies this element in data stores when classification scans run.

    • Disabled: platform ignores this element during scans.

4. Impact on Cloud Inventory classification scans

  1. If a Data Element is disabled, instances of that attribute in Cloud Inventory classification scans will not be detected or flagged.

  2. This lets teams:

    • Exclude irrelevant or low-value attributes.

    • Reduce noise and improve classification accuracy.

    • Focus remediation and compliance efforts on genuinely high-risk attributes.

5. Country management

Country Management allows you to control the availability of Data Elements at a country level. These settings apply globally to all Data Elements associated with a specific country and directly influence how classification scans behave across your environment.

Purpose of Country Management

Country Management helps organisations:

  • Align data classification with regional regulations and compliance requirements.

  • Exclude data elements that are not relevant for certain geographies.

  • Reduce noise in classification results by focusing only on applicable countries.

  • Maintain consistent, centralised control over country-specific data detection.

Configuring Country Management

  1. Navigate to the Data Elements screen in the Matters Console.

  2. Click on Country Management.

Enabling or Disabling Data Elements by Country

Within the Country Management view, you can enable or disable Data Elements based on the country they are associated with.

  • Enabled Country

    • All Data Elements linked to that country will be actively detected and classified during classification scans.

  • Disabled Country

    • When a country is disabled, all Data Elements associated with that country are ignored during classification scans.

    • For example, if Country X is disabled, any Data Element mapped to Country X will not be detected or flagged, even if it exists in the data store.

This behaviour applies automatically and consistently across all scan

Saving Configuration Changes

After making the required changes:

  1. Review the enabled and disabled countries.

  2. Click Save to apply the configuration.

Once saved, the updated country settings take effect for all subsequent classification scans.

6. Supported Data Element Categories

  • Personal Data Elements

  • IT & Security Data Elements

  • Financial Data Elements

7. Adding a Custom Data Element: Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Navigate to: Data Catalogue → Data Elements → Click “Add New Data Element”.

  1. Provide the following fields:

  • Data Element Name : enter a proper, descriptive name.

  • Country Label :choose from supported countries.(Country support: Global, India, USA, UK, Singapore, France, Spain and Canada.)

  • Labels supported:Personal, Financial, Health and IT Security.

  • Severity :select Critical / High / Medium / Low.

  • Define the Regex :provide the regular expression used to detect the element.

  • Description :enter a clear description for the element.

  1. Scope : Select whether the Data Element applies to:

  • Apply to All Projects: the custom entity is added to all projects in the Account.

  • Apply to Current Project: it will be added only to the current project.

  1. After adding, you can later change the Severity or delete the custom entity at any time if you need.

  1. If you click any entity in the console you will see:

  • Where that sensitivity is found inside data stores.

  • Distribution by region, account and data store.

  • Associated risk profiles and the data stores where it is found.

Document Class Categories and Examples

  1. Definition: A Document Class groups documents by structure, content type and business purpose.

  2. Purpose: Document Classes enable:

    • Automatic classification of files (PDFs, images, office files, logs).

    • Identification of files containing sensitive/regulatory information for protection.

    • Mapping to regulatory frameworks (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI) to support compliance.

    • Improved discovery, DLP, retention and access governance.

3. Document Classes — Organised by Category

  • Financial

  • Telecom Regulatory

  • Legal

  • IT & Technical

  • Telecom R&D

  • Marketing & Sales

  • Identity & Personal