ConnectionsExpert (CE) offers two variants of data protection that are used throughout the product: Anonymization and Pseudonymization (A&P). Which one is used depends on the data that is being looked at, the state of the user profile and what is set up via license or configuration.
Tracing individual user activity is a topic that is strictly regulated by workers councils in many European countries and/or must in some cases be handled in consideration of regulations around the GDPR. Since much of CE's functionality is based on user activity and events, this layer of data protection is necessary.
Pseudonymization is a method to substitute identifiable data with a reversible, consistent value. (e.g. "john.doe@acme.com" becomes "pseudonymized.4711@acme.com") Anonymization is the destruction of the identifiable data. (e.g. value of field "job responsibility" turns from "Chief Technical Officer" into "-[ Anonymized ]-") |
There are two main scenarios when one or more of these techniques are used:
Your CE license has a license property that controls whether user data is anonymized or pseudonymized in your environment. The default for this property is that A&P is enabled unless requested otherwise. You can check your A&P setting in the System Configuration menu to verify your status.
Visit the panagenda Help Center support.panagenda.com if you would like to request a license with a setting that is different from the one in your existing license. |
In certain situations it may be convenient to activate A&P even though the license does not require it. In that case it can be configured manually via an ETL parameter:
This setting CANNOT be used to disable A&P if the license specifies that it must be enabled. |
The main area restricted by A&P are clearly user profiles. These are daily imported from connections and are used in many different areas throughout CE, both for data processing as well as visualization tasks.
The most obvious example is the list of user profiles, where data is split in three different categories:
These three methods are used throughout the solution, including tables available via the DataMiner analytics API.
If IBM Connections users are deleted from the underlying database, that profile will undergo a process where A&P also plays a role. Similar to the handling of active user profiles, this persons properties will be processed depending on their content and either pseudonymized, anonymized or not altered. The main difference is that these users will be referred to as "-[ Deleted User XXX ]-" rather than "-[ Pseudonymized User XXX ]-".
Keeping records of these deleted users ensures consistency of collected data when referencing events with users.