Robert Galambos Visual Resume

In the world where presentations can make or break a sale, a project, or a policy, I thought it would be a great idea to create something to showcase my MS PowerPoint skill set.

 Visual Resume

Musing of Big Data and Privacy

Big Data and Privacy. Or should a Big Box store figure out if someone is pregnant?  

Is that Private?

So what is Big Data? Is it the latest 'fashion statement' from the IT world? A bunch of numbers, letters, that represent something or someone? Something of an asset?

All the above and more. Basically it is the information, or data, that is generated by everyone and everything.  Examples of Big Data include this particular blog entered on the web, the decoding of the human genome, the buying habits for your customers, your credit score etc.

 Its 'stuff'. 

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt stated: “From the dawn of civilization until 2003, humankind generated five exabytes of data. Now we produce five exabytes every two days…and the pace is accelerating.”

SO that is Big Data. But how does it concern privacy? Before we go there, lets reflect this issue. 

Companies are generating great mounds of data. Everything from what you purchase in grocery items (those Customer loyalty cards) to what credit cards you use and where. 

This is an asset to the company. It is something that can be analyzed, inspected, and reported on, all for the purpose to get the upper edge from their competitors,  a better understanding of the customers,how to market/target them to get the best results, What tickles their fancy so to speak? Maybe get that same customer to buy milk from your company as well as  the clothing that they buy now.

While doing the research for this blog I came across an interesting case study concerning this  issue.

A major Big Box chain’s (not Wal-Mart) department of thinkers (not a real department but could have well been named that) got together to try to see if they could 'predict' which of their  customers were pregnant. 

The reason was if they can get that pregnant customer to start buying the 'stuff' needed for the happy occasion, they could influence their buying patterns in the future. A better 'bottom' line (pun intended).

They had all this raw data about their clients and their buying habits. They can mine the information (Big Data) and determine if there were any patterns. And the results were, to say the least, eye opening. 

Now, this blog is not the place to have a detailed discussion about this, but needless to say the mathematical model that was developed was successful in more the 87% to predict, based solely on buying habits, which of their clients were pregnant. They were then able to target  the pregnant customers with  coupons, flyer's, etc in hopes getting them to buy more ‘STUFF’, 

This was done without the a client filling out a form letting the company know they were expecting, Ms Jane Doe customer had yet to buy a single diaper etc. The mining of this client’s information from the company database which indicated her buying habits, was the only determining factor. 

That is what Big Data is, and what it can do.

Can you see the issues in privacy in all this? Actually, there are really three different issues when dealing with Big Data.

Is what the company doing legal?

Is it ethical?

Is it acceptable to the general public? 

Let tackle the legality first. 

It’s not a simple answer. There are a lot of variables involved. Where does the customer live? Did he/she give permission to the company to use the data collected for internal (and maybe external) use? These are but two questions that privacy officers need to deal with, address and ultimately sign off on. 

Generally speaking, we can assume, when a customer signs up for a loyalty card, there would be some form of authorization to use the data. Or at least best practices demands such sort of disclosure, if nothing else. And this may be the easiest of the three questions.

Is it ethical? 

PHD theses have been written about this very question for 'years'. There is no gov't review panel to determine if it is or not ethical, but the question is still very valid.  One education site states that ' ethics refers to standards of behavior that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations..'  

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html

While there is no stand fast rules on what is and is not ethical, one can, if for no other reason,  look into the mirror and ask the question? Is this ok?

Is it then acceptable? 

Going back to the story above, let’s see what happened. After the store created the model, they started sending flyer's, coupons that would target the would be moms. Examples, like diapers coupons , flyer's featuring cribs etc.  were sent out to the targeted group. 

Well, you can imagine what happened next. Many irate customers wondered, first of all, how did this company know they were expecting. Even more damaging to the company’s reputation was the fact that they were sending baby oriented coupons to non pregnant clients. And what if those target accounts were teenagers, and/or single,  and/or religious?

A public relations nightmare. In fact, while doing the research, I was surprised that this had not been thought out more thoroughly in the marketing department of the company.

All these factors play in the realm of Big Data. And privacy is just one of those factors.

Ultimately, the people responsible for privacy need to assure themselves that the use of the data is within legal constraints. 

It can be more complicated if that data  being analyzed is sent out to another company. There are 'mounds' of companies whose only job is to message the data and make sense of it. They can then market to those clients with targeted campaigns  as successfully as possible(the pregnant ladies from the above example), to get the best return on the data. (the Big Data).

Big Data means being able to see trends and patterns, not determining individuals buying habits per say. 

No one in Costco cares if the individual named Robert will buy a steak or a bottle of milk. What they do care about is influencing the group that Robert ‘belongs to’ so they can somehow how influence that targeted group to buy both products (as an example).  

 So an argument concerning privacy can go something like this:

Its not the PII information of a particular person that is being used (for the most part) for this type of analysis, but that a customer bought an item and he is middle aged, 6 foot, lives in a middle class area, Etc. And he belongs to a statistical group that represents 25% of the customer base in a particular region.

Maybe. But then again is that the only usage of these great mounds of data?

The debate on Big Data, how to handle it, and the ramifications on privacy will continue. What we need to do, is have the dialog, ask the questions, figure out what can and should be done. 

The concerns won't go away, and ignoring the issues will only make it worse.  We all need to first understand the issues and then try to make 'a go at it.' And at same time making sure we don't shot ourselves in the foot.

Testing, in the black box (ATV), Security & Privacy

How Automate Testing Vehicles (ATV) should include Pentesting.

Why should privacy officers get involved in development, regression testing process?

Why does IT need to improve their testing strategies?

Pitfalls in Testing, Security/Privacy concerns is what drives people to have nightmares. Privacy officers need to have a better understanding of the environment they work in. The IT people need to embrace the notion that Privacy/Security starts from the beginning. So in that way the chances of being on a front page of a newspaper because of a breach and/or a failure will be minimized. NO ONE wants to phone the CIO about a problem like this. It is a team effort.

I do have to warn you, the reader, that some of the material may be a  little IT oriented. But in an organization where one needs to satisfy a number of different objectives, I would suggest at least a basic knowledge of the IT process is needed. And that the IT personnel need to understand the present compliance/regulator landscape.

Some definitions are warranted before I begin.

ATV or Automated Testing Vehicle. What is it? Why do I care? And is it a 'best practice'? (one of the most over used phrase at present).

The idea is fairly simple. Having a set of scripts (automated) that can be run to test the system in question. The objective is to test the system before any changes are implemented. The process should set up  the files that will be used for testing(see one of my previous blog posts concerning using data for testing),  then run the test scripts, and afterwards run the comparison reports and highlight items of concern from the test just executed. All this is done in an automated fashion. Rather simple concept, but one that can be 'processes' changing in a good way.

Well there is more to this. But let me define another term or two first.

IT systems that are down cost money in lost revenue, and good will to the enterprise.  As an example, in 2012 Google had an outage.
Google June 2012 down for 10 min.

The ball park figure cost that Google suffered was calculated at about $750,000. And that was for 10 minutes.  Now I am not suggesting all downtime costs are that much. It depends on the circumstances, but I am sure no one would like to find out for their own companies.

Another good example of the costs is sited at costs of web down time per industry

This site allows you to calculate the cost of a web site being down per industry/application. Its an eye opener to say the least.

In another 'word', downtime is BAD/EXPENSIVE *Yea  I know that is two words*. But joking aside we need to reduce unavailability as much as possible.

PenTesting. Wikipedia link  The Information Systems Audit and Control Association(ISACA) defines Penetration Testing as  "A test of the effectiveness of security defences through mimicking the actions of real-life attackers."

(For the reader who is more concerned with Privacy/Security, please read on)

So now let's proceed. When an application change happens IT personnel (or a designated organization) tests the changes (IE regression testing). They test the change to see if it works. Now depending on the process that is followed, a user may also test/approve the same series of changes to the application for user approval. Fine, right? Do you notice something missing in the above? In fact, there is more then one item here that needs to be defined/explored.

For many organizations testing to maintain the basic functions within an application does happen in a haphazardly way.  Sure the change is tested and to get to the enhancements, some basic functions are tested as well, But, based on my anecdotal experiences, on many occasions, the entire core functions of the changed application are not testing on a consistent bases.  A test of the all the basic core functions should also be completely tested whenever there is a change.

As an example, if the application in question is some public facing web application (a web store as an example), basic function testing should also be done. Test for example, the ability to add/change a Credit card information and make sure that the update still works. Test adding an item to the shopping cart etc.

So if the new function within the application fails, you have verified that the basic core functions, the one you need to keep the doors open, will still operate.

Imagine if an error occurs at your bank, yet the basic functions were tested successfully with the 'improved mobile bank portal' (the change that will be implemented).  Then logic would dictate that the basic functions should still work (you can still pay bills) even if the enhancement of the bank's mobile app does not. Corrections can be retested and implemented with minimal cost/embarrassment to the organization.

I am therefore advocating that there should be standard testing scripts that confirm, even with the changes that are going to be implemented,  that ALL the core functions still are accessible.

So to implement a process like this, you first need to map out the basic functions that you can not live without. Once that is done and scripts are created, an automated process should be created. When ready, a series of script can be executed with little human intervention. (less change for human error). The 'Best Practice' (there is that phase again) would be something along the lines of submitting the scripts and going home. When you get into the office the following day the results are ready for analysis/correction etc.

This should ensure that at even if the new change fails. You, the customer, can still do business with the organization in question. This is what some people call a ATV (see above). This process can be called your insurance policy.

However, lets' takes this further. Why just test  the basic functionality of the application? Should we also test for Security/Privacy issues?  Should the company's Privacy/Security office ensure that this type of testing, verification is also included within an ATV and executed whenever anything changes?

Absolutely!

A process that includes PenTesting (see above) is something one should consider adding to the above mentioned ATV. With any change there is always a chance that a vulnerability is created that may not have been there before.

Any failure can by it's very nature, cause the potential to expose sensitive information. It can be business secrets, and/or Personnel Identifiable Information (PII) to name but two potential headaches.

There is software in the marketplace that has the capability to engage/test/analyze applications for vulnerabilities. Some of the software I have previously mentioned as well as others which are available with the capabilities needed.

So I suggest that one creates an ATV process that includes the basic functionality of the application/system in question as well as additional testing for security/privacy. All  this should be automated so that more extensive testing can be executed as well as reducing the chance for human error.

Privacy officers need to ensure that any changes that are implemented will not cause exposure that may be costly. IT people need to make sure that the basic systems functions still run, no matter what is changed.

Finally, while no one can claim in absolute terms that there will be no issues, following these basic concepts can help reduce the chance that the CIO needs to be called because of an issue.

Privacy for IT, Security for PO, Privacy by Design PdB.

So far I have tried to tackle how different professionals look at privacy differently and how stakeholders are an important piece of the pie

What I am going to try to address within this post is how technical ideas affect privacy and security, as well.

I will also attempt to provide some guidance concerning some of the issues I will discuss here.

Please  note, I have no relationships with any of the companies that I mention here, or any in any other posts that I have written. Also, it is up to the reader to do their own due diligence.

Now, the reader may have some level of knowledge of the 'tecky' stuff but I will try not to make any assumptions. What I want to do is to highlight some aspects, describe them for those who may not be as technically inclined, and provide some resources where more research can be done.

Some lay people use the words security and privacy interchangeable. While security is needed to maintain privacy, it can mean other things as well. For example, physical security of a public facing office (banks, insurance agents offices etc) is generally accepted that it need to be addressed,  to protect the employees (non privacy issue) and protect the companies customers from data breaches, which is a privacy concern.

What I am going to deal with here is security that is needed to protect Personal Identifiable Information (PII)

So lets get started.

Security

Hopefully, when a developer starts coding for a new application, or making enhancements to an existing application, he/she will know how to code to prevent security holes within the code. But as we all know, we are all human.

SO what can we do?

A new type of software is emerging that can help developers to highlight what they should be coding. This is in a form of questions/guidance that can be based on questions/queries from a knowledge base. The objective is to build into the design document (this is the document that concern how the programs work together and coded, given the requirements of the application being worked on). This would then place into the design document specifications of the required defences that need to be incorporated within the code.

The two software products that I am aware that falls within this category are:

1) SD Elements (http://www.sdelements.com)

2) Security Innovations (https://www.securityinnovation.com)

Both have there strength and weaknesses. They also tackle this aspect of security coding in a very different way.

As an analogy, let us use the example of your car (or your friends, car if you don't have one <S>), or boat, bike etc. Which is cheaper? Is it changing your oil every x KM/Miles, or waiting for the engine to seize when the oil can no longer do its job?

On average it costs about $4,000 to fix a vulnerability in an application (SD Elements). According to White Hat Security (https://www.whitehatsec.com/resource/stats.html) on average, there are 56 vulnerabilities per website (2012). So let's do some math, Shall we?

It will cost $4,000 times 56 on average to fix all the problems with security on a public facing websites, for a total of, and average of $224,000.

You can close your mouth now.

And to top it all off 85% of all websites White Hat tested had one vulnerability. And to make matters worse, it took, on average, 193 days from the date the issue was detected until it was resolved. Never mind that 61% of the White Hat tested websites that had vulnerabilities were never fixed in the first place.

In other words, the best practices, as well as the ROI,  demand that we need to try to nip this issue in the bud. It follows that company's policy should have security requirements and processes be part of the design phase of any project.

Privacy

At this point let me highlight a series of documents, white papers that have been produced by the Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Canada. (IPCO) Dr Ann Cavoukian PH. D.

The premise advocated by the IPCO is that of Privacy by Design (PbD). It goes in to much more depth that is beyond the scope of this blog but I encourage you to head over there and explore.

There are two sides to the equation. Security for the professional IT people and Privacy for the legal 'minds'. How in essence they are complementary and how they must exists together.

As a note here, one of the white papers on the sir 'Privacy and Security by Design: A convergence of Paradigms' talks about what I am writing about here. It was released in Jan 2012.

I do have to make an admission to the reader. I started writing  these blogs, and this one in particular, before I had any notion of this white paper's existence. When i did discover the PbD white papers i realized the concepts, topics, and themes were similar to the issues I have explored in my blogs,

I will continue along this road next time. I will highlight examples of different forms of testing for security and ideas of privacy.

Stakeholder/Privacy/Security Oh My

 


To continue with the theme I presented last time in which I discussed the differences between privacy (first pillar) and security (second pillar), I want to add a third pillar, that of the stakeholder. 

It seems obvious that he/she should also be included in any discussion along these lines. And yet stakeholders can only add complexity to the equation.  But before I begin, here are a couple of notes. I received a number of comments concerning the previous post. Some people commented about the fact that any discussion should include other interested groups as well. And as you will see, that is exactly what I will be doing here.   Yet I would be remiss unless I addressed another issue that was also brought up. 

What I 'd like to do, and only you, the reader, will be able to determine if I am successful, is to highlight the 'human' factor in this equation. As we move more and more to depending on, exploring, and exploiting the technology we use/rely on, we have had to develop tools to manage and control the reliance on the same technology. We have tools to check the code for security holes. We have tools to make sure we develop compliance processes. We have tools to help the auditors to verify systems, etc. 

Yet the one aspect that is forgotten in this mix is the human factor. He/she is the coder, the report writer, the auditor who verifies the results. etc. No system is fool proof and no human is perfect, except you the reader.   So why bring this up? I do so because some of the comments I received include the following: 'a security/privacy system that is put in place will address the wide divide between humans and technology/compliance'.

In response to this I say that tools are important, but we must realize that the tools are not the entire solution to this quandary. We need to understand entire eco system so we can successfully address the issues of Security, Privacy, Regulation, and Compliance. That being both the technology we use, and the tools we use to control/enhance it. 

So let's begin My objective in the previous blog was to highlight some of the inherent issues that prevail within the privacy/security domain. Here I want to explore the added complexity by adding the involvement of the stakeholder to this process.  Let define some terms. A stakeholder is the 'outsider'. The person who ultimately gains from the process being discussed. For a lack of a better way of definition, the owner/holder of the data in question. This can be a VP of the product line, the director of the stores, the sales manager etc. He/she is the one who can say, without question, 'the buck stops here". 

Generally speaking he just wants good end results. Most stakeholders see the added cost of implementing a well defined privacy policy/practice in place as an overhead that needs to be controlled. 

They want to make sure their data is safe but ask them if they think the added cost of security systems in place is, for example, worthwhile to prevent internal development personnel from having access to the real data, they would balk. (Note this is a generic over simplified statement, but I use it to make a point). To address this issue I point to a number of organizations that rely on non disclosure agreements (NDA)  the only protection to address the above mentioned issue. This is 'cheap' to implement and easy to maintain. Yet I hope you, the reader, understands that this solution is like having your teenager promise they will clean up the room. A good idea but without any other incentive probably doomed to failure.

The problem here is that we all have different views on the same situation. We come with different experiences, responsibilities, education. While the stakeholder is ultimately the person responsible (For further info along these lines read about the SOX act that was passed in the US), she/he may not know how a truly good governance regulation compliance (GRC) process is created. And in fact he might not even know why the company needs one in the first place.

So taking the analogy I used in my previous post(how security personnel and privacy professionals look at a 'square' and see it differently), the stakeholder is the owner of the 'square'. He holds the square but has no idea how it is constructed but only knows how the square is used, IE. not how the WEB application works. Only that a customer can sign in and order the widget.  So what can we to do? The answer I suggest is fairly simple. Education. 

The privacy officer must educate the interested parties. These parties include the stakeholders, the IT personnel Given that there is a privacy officer already in place means that the first step has been taken. The people who work on security need to educate everyone on what needs to done and what it takes to get it done.

The security personnel need to interpret the requirements and educate the parties on how this is implemented. Why does it extend the software development cycle. So in other words by educating the parties they can justify the time and materials that will be needed to produce eco systems that achieve the goals set out by all the interested parties within a manageable framework.

So to help the reader, I am suggesting a couple of different resources that can be used to help. 

1) A short piece on how to explain HIPAA to the layman (Stakeholder). It also provides some additional reading that may be of interest.

http://www.ehow.com/info_7778811_laymans-guide-hipaa-compliance.html

2) A very interesting website that targets NON lawyers with information concerning privacy. There are a lot of very good additional links that can be of some help. Please note that this site deals mostly with US laws.

http://www.eprivacy.com/lectures/toc.html#toc

3) Another good resource for educational purpose is the Electronic Privacy Information Center website. Once again, mostly US information.

http://epic.org/privacy/

4) On the consumer side of the debate, a list of resources can be found at 

http://www.privacyrightsnow.com/affiliates.htm

5) And finally, two studies that come out yearly. 

       A) One is the Telus security group yearly that looks at the state of Canadian companies security. It has 5 recommendations as well as pointers on how to try to make security more prevalent in the workplace. Registration is required.

http://promo.telus.com/securitystudy/

        B) The other one is the Verizon security's 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report. This report is a yearly report that encompasses expertise and information from various international organizations responsible for the reporting and investigation of data breaches. If you do not look at any  other resources listed here, then this is the one to read.

http://www.verizonenterprise.com/DBIR/2013/insider/

Please note the opinion of the individual authors/websites are their own, and I do not advocate, agree or dis-agree with the opinion expressed.

And this is just a sample of various resources that are available to help with the issues described above. But ultimately it is up to the individual to make sure they adhere to the best practices within their industry and Country.

Till next time

Privacy and Security sometimes don't talk the same language.

 

In this blog, which may seem as a little rambling of sorts, I will try to first explain where I see the disjointedness between Security (where the IT people see it) and Privacy (where the Audit Privacy officers see it). I will then try to guide the reader to various resources on the web to offer help.

This will allow the reader, no matter which side of the fence they sit on, to at least understand the other side and understand what they are talking about. Some of these resources quoted below will be targeted for the IT techies, and the others for the Privacy gurus. By putting  them in one central location I hope to bring together, in some small part, the two groups so they can better understand each other.

So let's begin.


Privacy. According to the Webster online Dictionary: 'freedom from unauthorized intrusion <one's right to privacy> '

Security. According to the Webster online Dictionary: 'measures taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or escape '


An explanation. Security is the process that is put in place to protect the Privacy of the information, whether it is Personnel Identifiable Information (PII), company's intellectual property etc.

We have a problem. The 'WE' in the previous sentence belongs to the IT personnel as well as  the Privacy Officers of an organization. Many times the Computer guys speaks in 'techy talk' (subroutines, C#, apache configuration etc) and the Compliance personnel talk in legalese (jurisprudence, PIPEDA, Opt in, Office of the Privacy Commissioner etc). So, it is no wonder that many organizations seem to have a disconnect between the two.

To address the need for privacy and security in our day to day computer lives, some measures were/are developed by people who may look at a issue  but see it in two different ways.

As an analogy, let's take a look at a square drawn on a piece of paper. The IT people see it as four lines connected at the corners, and the Privacy people see it as four corners connect by some lines. (I hope you get my meaning in this analogy I just presented). Both are right, but both don't see the entire picture either. And thus, this illustrates the issues that many organizations face.

Yes this disconnect is evolving. There are now certification/training sessions for people who are responsible for privacy policies and are not  technical (for more info go to https://www.privacyassociation.org/) but try to bridge the gap (CIPP/IT) And there is various integrated development environment (IDE)  to try to ensure that the code written can be tested for security (IE PENetration testing etc.) But as much as these two groups are trying to work and understand each other there can be some areas where they are miles apart.

If you have followed this series from the beginning, you would have remembered at least one very common example where there is a security/privacy hole big enough to drive a tractor trailer through. (see my previous blogs for more information) And I would bet my two weeks of pay(jar of peanuts) that most Compliance/office of privacy departments have yet to investigate the arena. This is a clear example where the lack of understanding of one department operations by another can lead to some very ominous problems.

Privacy Officials, for the most part do not understand the nuisances of coding, testing , developing applications etc. for the current market place. They do know the laws of the land, and do create compliance rules that all have to abide by.

IT professionals, again for the most part, do not understand the rules that governs Privacy. What is a Opt in or Opt out option? Why must Credit card numbers  be treated under some externally developed standards? What are those standards? (Well, maybe they do, but this is used only as a simplistic example). IT professionals know how to create a automated process to sell, bill, retrieve the widgets that the company makes, Yet the problem is that IT people (the techies) more often then not are not involved, nor understand the Privacy Realm.

Education on both sides is the only real answer. So in the following I will try to give some resources to the reader with some comments that may help understand the other side.

Please note I do not have any financial relationships with the organizations listed below. Nor do I recommend or agree with the statements contained within, though I have found these sites to contain valuable information. Whether you are a techie or privacy person I strongly suggest you take a look at all these resources to better understand the world we have to work in, so to speak.

The first resource that you may or may not be aware is the Privacy Rights Clearing House. (https://www.privacyrights.org/). A very useful web site, where among other items, is a list of all publicly disclosed data breaches since 2005. In fact according to the web site, as of when I started writing this blog, 607,472,154 DATA RECORDS WERE BREACHED. The number of breaches were 3,678 DATA BREACHES made public since 2005.

The type of breaches  that you will find there include 'dumpster diving', laptop/hard drive being misplaced, and SQL injection to name but three. Chances are that you or someone you know was a victim of at least one, if not more, of a data breach. In fact if you do the math, the number of records is about twice the entire population of the US. And this site is very light on breaches outside of the US.

The next resource  is Ponemon Institute (http://www.ponemon.org/). This site has  a wealth of research on the  who and how of privacy. Its stated purpose is 'to enable organizations in both the private and public sectors to have a clearer understanding of the trends in practices, perceptions and potential threats that will affect the collection, management and safeguarding of personal and confidential information about individuals and organizations.'


The next site I would like to point the readers to is the Verizon Security Blog. (http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com). Basically a week by week analysis of what security issues are out there. Also, they have teamed up with various
International Law Enforcement organizations to issue a yearly report investigating the causes of data breaches. And the information would be a surprise to some. For example

97%  OF ATTACKS ARE AVOIDABLE BY SIMPLE OR INTERMEDIATE
CONTROL.

The latest report on this web site is a review of 2012, but the updated 2013 report is expected out very shortly.

Next is an organization called International Association of Privacy Professionals (https://www.privacyassociation.org).

I happen to have two certifications from them. They have two items I would recommend the reader to investigate. One is a blog they call Privacy Perspective, an interesting blog where various people talk about issues of the day. The other item  is their 'DASHBOARD' (They have one for US, Canada, Europe and ANZ). They gleam information from various sources and present them in a concise 'executive' brief type.


The above resources are just a tip of the iceberg. The problem with Privacy professionals and IT gurus understanding each other and thus being able to frame the issues/requirements/concerns, etc taking into account  each other's prospective is not something that can be done within a simple blog. But I hope that it will open some people's minds on what the issues are and some resources that will bridge the gap. Or at least have each side gain a better understanding of the other.

Next blog will continue along these same lines.

However the next blog will be in two weeks time.

Till then, if you have any comments or feel like you want to touch base, drop me a line at rgalambos@gmail.com

Data Privacy Project road map part Deux

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 Before we get started, let’s review some critical items that we covered last time.

The analysis phase of any Test Data Privacy Project (as all other IT projects) is the lynch pin, where you make or break the project. So to summarize this step you need the following:

1)    Identify the meta data of the application(s) in question

2)    ‘Marry” the meta data to the data stores (the field in the meta data that corresponds to underlying  table/file)

3)    Inspect the potential PII Fields/data to see if they are actual fields that need masking. A sample would be nice to show the SME, if there are any questions about the field contents.

Then we have the design step. The following is the continuation of the discussion from my pervious blog entry.

It is the SME who is the critical member of the project team in this phase. He/she will be asked questions like, how do these fields that were identified in the previous step as PII, interact with each other?  A simple example: is there an edit to make sure the city zip/postal code combination is valid?. The rules should be consistent throughout the environment. IE, if you age the birthday in one file in a certain way, you will need to age the birthday the same way in any other data store you have.

Now before we move on, I should address a question that should be brought up at this time. Are you going to need to sub-set the data while masking it? (see my blog Testing and Data Privacy, is there an issue (final post or is it)?  After you answer that question, the next one is HOW? (And as I mentioned before, my expectation is that you will answer YES to this question). Are you going to want to take a random set of customers (as an example) and mask all the related records of those customers? Or has the SME given you a list of branches that will be used for testing? So you need to also mask the customers of those branches, including the addresses of the customers of those chosen branches,  the SSN/SIN/Tax ID for those customers, and extract only those products that the target branches have to sell etc.  What this all means is that you will need to design the extract process at the same time as the masking process. This can be a large hurtle to be overcome, BUT the end results will more then make up for the effort. (this will be a subject of another blog entry in the future)

WARNING WARNING WARNING

I’ve got your attention, I hope. What I need to highlight here is that the sub-setting of data and the obfuscation of the data needs to be done at the same time. Failure to do this, may mean an increase chance of a data breach.  Now back to your regular scheduled program.

The actual masking rules do not only depend on the requirements, as defined by the SME and/or legal/privacy personnel (see above), but also is driven by the chosen tool set that you have. For example, if the toolset you are using, does not use >128 bit Strong encryption, should you still use that technique for masking? If you need to be able to reverse the obfuscation (if there is a legitimate reason) then that may restrict what kind of rules/code that can be used to mask the data in the first place.

Another aspect that needs to be considered, but many times forgotten, is how will the audit requirements be satisfied for this project? And make no mistake about it, there will be a need for audit reporting for this process. Why do I say that? It is because the masking process is most likely being driven by either regulatory requirements, or best practices. And in either case some sort of ‘proof of the pudding’ will be required. This also needs to be taken into account within the project.

Once the design phase is finished, we will then move on to the coding.  There is not much I can say here :

1)    Depending on the chosen toolset you will be using, it will indicate how one will code the rules, and the limitation of those same rules

2)    Try to reuse as much of the masking rules as you can. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, if one can help oneself. Some tolls allow for one rule to be applied to many different data sources. And for obvious reasons that is something I encourage you to do as much as possible

Next is the implementation phase. This should be the easiest step. I mean, isn’t this just another IT project? And don’t you implement IT projects ‘all the time’?  It should follow the same process, right?

Maybe. But to see if it is easy, one needs to ask a series of questions first. Some examples of questions are as follows;

1)             How often will the obfuscation needs to be run?

2)             Who is responsible for the running of the process? Will it be production support, or will the users themselves run the series of jobs in question?

3)             Will there be a need to have user input before each run. (IE. Will the data sub-setting requirements change)

4)             How will change management be taken care of? In other words, if a file/field is changed or added, how will the masking process be updated? Who will do it? And how do you ensure nothing falls between the cracks.

5)             Make sure that the Audit reporting is implemented. Is it on request, or will some sort of reporting need to be done every time? Will the reports need to be secured?

And in all these steps, you should make sure you document EVERYTHING, in a concise and accurate manner. Only with this being done can one try to assure a successful ongoing, maintainable process. I would suggest setting up a Lotus/Excel worksheet to help with this.

The intention of this blog is not to replace due diligence. Each IT environment is different, with its unique challenges. My sole intention is to try to help the community to tackle this concern head on. Experience tells me that this is a big task, but does not have to be daunting.

As the many clients I have known can attest to, if one does this methodically, with foresight, one can achieve a successful conclusion.

If you have any questions about this or any other topic that I post, or you want me to explore some issue, drop me a line at rgalambos@gmail.com.

Till next time