Silwood Technology has introduced Safyr® Version 7, a software product that enables users to identify sources of Personal Data in major ERP and CRM packages for GDPR compliance in minutes.
Analysts, architects and other data professionals can now use Safyr to access, understand, share and utilise the underlying data structures for major packages from SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft and other packages.
Finding the precise location of data defined as ‘Personal’ under GDPR from amongst the thousands of tables and columns (or fields) in customised systems, represents a significant challenge. Traditional tools and methods, such as searching for documentation, using templates and reference models or employing external consultants, do not address the challenge in an effective and timely fashion.
As an example, consider how many times the Personal Data attribute “birth” might occur in an SAP system which contains over 90,000 tables. Using Safyr in a recent client engagement, a customer was able to find all occurrences of the Personal Data string ‘birth’ across all tables and fields in an SAP system in under five minutes. That information could then be delivered to metadata and data governance platforms for further exploitation, for example for data lineage, metadata glossary or enterprise data dictionary applications.
Safyr now offers two new features in response to the need to identify all Personal Data held on an individual for GDPR compliance programs.
Marked Field – this feature addresses the problem of having large numbers of unwanted or irrelevant attributes in some tables. It enables users to easily isolate all instances of a particular term (e.g. “birth) across an entire system, and decide exactly which items of the metadata set are relevant and need to be retained.
The feature also enables the combination of several sets of Personal Data attributes into a single manageable grouping.
Metadata Reporting - has been introduced to support organisations that may not yet have embarked on the implementation of a Data Governance or Enterprise Metadata Management platform for GDPR. It provides them with the ability to export Safyr content directly to Excel to enable faster and more effective collation and management of Personal Data.
Commenting on Safyr 7, Founder and Technical Director of Silwood Technology, Nick Porter said, “We recognised the unique challenge associated with documenting where Personal Data fields or attributes exist in large complex packages, and have enhanced Safyr to make that process faster and easier. Safyr 7 will make a major contribution to our customers and partners GDPR compliance efforts.”
Rob Perry, Vice President of Product Marketing at ASG Technologies, a Silwood Technology partner, commented on how Safyr is a key tool in data discovery for the GDPR and complements data intelligence tools: “Complying with the GDPR requires that organizations know what Personal Data is managed, where it came from and how it has been used.
“Silwood Technology’s Safyr software has a unique ability to identify Personal Data used by the ERP and CRM systems on which many businesses depend. ASG’s Data Intelligence complements this by tracing Personal Data lineage, which is the key foundation to the Data Governance needed for GDPR compliance. Together the two solutions can reduce the risk of the large penalties that can result from non-compliance”.
