Meaning – There is a lot of data that is processed around the world on a daily basis. Some of the data is enciphered for security purposes. This kind of data is usually very sensitive and is only meant for the people concerned. On the other hand, there is certain data that is more general and is available for access to the general public. This kind of data is not enciphered and is called clear data.
In organizations, there are dedicated teams of employees who are tasked with segregating data between sensitive and general, and the former is subjected to heavy enciphering, to protect the contents.
Example of usage – “The new employee was handed a bunch of files and was instructed to spot the plain text from the collection.”
