determining a plurality of management characteristics for an information type;

determining a plurality of business characteristics for the information type;

determining at least one management tally for the information type based on the management characteristics;

determining a management characteristic scoring scale;

assigning a management characteristic score to each management characteristic for the information type;

calculating a linear combination of the management characteristic scores associated with the information type;

determining at least one business tally for the information type based on the business characteristics wherein determining the business tally comprises:

determining a business characteristic scoring scale;

assigning a business characteristic score to each business characteristic for the information type; and

calculating a linear combination of the business characteristic scores associated with the information type;

determining a normalization factor for the business tally;

determining at least one management weighting factor for each or for all of the management characteristics;

determining at least one business weighting factor for each or for all of the business characteristics;

determining an information class gradient based on the management tally and an information class value wherein the information class gradient includes a plurality of information classes having an information class range;

providing the information class value wherein the information class value represents the number of information classes in the information class gradient;

calculating a maximum possible management tally wherein the maximum possible management tally is a summation of a maximum management characteristic score for each management characteristic;

calculating the information class range as the quotient of the maximum possible management tally and the information class value;

determining at least one management information class based on the management tally and the information class gradient;

determining at least one business information class based on the business tally and the information class gradient;

determining a global information class for the information type based on the management tally and the business tally wherein determining the global information class for the information type comprises:

combining the at least one management weighting factor with the management tally to yield a weighted management tally;

combining the at least one business weighting factor with the business tally to yield a weighted business tally;

calculating a global tally based on the weighted management tally and the weighted business tally;

mapping the global tally into the information class gradient, and continuously updating the global tally based on an evaluation of the global information class;

defining the management characteristics;

defining the business characteristics; and

storing the information type based on the information class gradient.