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or the past five-plus decadesâ¬think history of the Cold Warâ¬the government has maintained a hierarchy of classified information, determined by the level of threat its exposure would bring to the United States. Top Secret owns the list: Its public knowledge would pose grave danger to national security. Weapons design specs and sensitive intelligence fall within this category.

Secret (the level that most classified information in this country is assigned) means if this information was leaked, it would cause serious damage. Confidential information would harm national security if it were made public; while itâ¬"s the lowest level, it is still information that the government does not want made available.

Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) refers to the security wrapped around access to this classified informationâ¬not the information itself. SCI is often loosely applied to describe all sensitive materials, and thatâ¬"s not correct, says Ben Shaw, facilities security officer (FSO) at advisory Morgan Franklin. â¬SPeople use it as a blanket term,â¬� he says, when in fact, itâ¬"s more like an extra layer of security, usually applied to special access programs or special government projects.

For example, the Department of Defense may want to limit access to sensitive information about a particular project so only people working on the project have access. Thus even an individual possessing a Top Secret security clearance would need specially granted access to that information (which would be maintained within a SCIF). There is no universal SCI clearance (as there is for Top Secret clearances) because an SCI access authorization is related to specific programs or information. Mattice says that before you even go through the clearance process, a contract sponsor from the government will certify that you â¬Sneed to knowâ¬� SCI level information. â¬SMost SCI access authorizations require one of the most in-depth...