Northern’s User Data Management software solution can be used to achieve a wide variety of goals. This section provides an overview of some of the common working practices that Northern’s customer have established and how technology-supported workflows are being used within these organizations to tackel specific risk or efficiency problems.
Northern enables customers to find and fix the broken processes that are putting the organization on the wrong side of data handling laws or are causing major bottom-line inefficiencies.
Example:
In a large North American financial institution it was identified that users were retrieving files from records management systems for editing and reference. Working drafts and reference copies were not being deleted when this work was completed. Sensitive data was being abandoned in unsecured locations.
In order to ensure short time-to-value Northern recommends that only four to five specific processes are targeted for improvement at any one time. When the deficiencies in these have been resolved, customers then move to address the next set of prioritized working practices.
Example:
In a large Japanese Car Manufacturer, growth control was the first focus area. After successfully introducing quota policies the IT services group next focused on understanding the nature of the current data footprint; scanning and review practices were setup. Following this, the customer moved to engage data owners in the review process; configuring Northern’s self-service interface to be used by specific ‘share owners’ within each business unit.
Best Practices
This section outlines some of the more common processes implemented by Northern’s customers. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but to give an idea of what kind of directives and policies are needed to tackle a specific behavior.
| • | Identify and Remedy Dangerous Working Practices Improve handling of data containing for example PII/PCI, passwords and other confidential information. |
| • | Efficiency Improvements in File Service Use Providing information for clean-up events and making sure only the right data is kept when an employee leave are examples of efficiency improvements. |
| • | Delivering on Specific Audit Requirements Setting up re-occurring tests and work-flows to improve compliancy with laws and regulations. |
| • | Integrating File Service Data into Other Systems Include file data like PII/PCI in for example security systems. |
GETTING STARTED
For a more efficient introduction of User Data Management Northern has created an approach with two parallel workstreams.
Download the Getting Started guide.
