5. Remediation and Workflow Integration | Data Profiling and Monitoring

5.1 Activity Summary

Activity Description	Once Data Analysts have completed the review activities that are appropriate for the organization, or for specific Business Units, then the findings must be remediated. There are a number of options that can be considered depending on the scale of the project and any existing business processes.
Goals	Reduce overheads by creating an efficient workflow and capture appropriate audit records.
Participants	Project / Program Manager, IT Team
Pre-requisites	Manifest of responsive files has been exported Required action(s) are understood
Outputs	Objects identified as non compliant with desired profile are remediated as required Business processes refined to reflect findings and to reduce proliferation of data that need not be retained ActiveNav Cloud remediation aligned with existing business processes

Activities

5.2 Alternative Approaches

There is no single approach for remediating validated findings that will suit all projects. The approaches outlined here illustrate some of the ways in which you may choose to address this. Some factors that should be considered when choosing an approach include: scalability, the type of remediation the business wishes to perform, who will be performing the remediation operation, logging requirements, and any existing tools and processes for this type of activity.

ActiveNav are happy to explore approaches with customers.

As well as adopting a relevant process for remediation of non compliant data you should consider whether existing data processes could be adapted to reduce the creation of non compliant data - prevention is better than cure.

5.3 Manual Processing

The simplest approach is to perform a manual remediation, guided by the exported list of validated findings. This is rarely a recommended approach unless used to address a small number of very urgent findings. Otherwise, a manual approach is likely to be time consuming and unscalable with no reliable logging.

5.4 Scripted Remediation

The most likely solution to apply is some form of scripted process that can read the exported list of files and perform the remediation automatically with appropriate logging.

Often customers’ IT teams already have existing tools that they use for this type of operation which allows remediation to form part of normal IT activity.

ActiveNav have a simple .Net based application that provides a framework for scripted remediation that can be shared as the basis for a custom approach.

5.5 Full Workflow Integration

In a larger organization it may be appropriate to handle remediation through existing IT workflow applications, for instance ServiceNow. This would allow a detailed record of remediation tasks to be maintained alongside other IT activities.

The nature of this type of integration would be entirely dependent on existing systems in use in the customer organization, and a degree of scripting is likely to be required for the actual remediation. ActiveNav have produced an example of how this approach may look using ServiceNow that can be demonstrated on request.

Next Step

Now that you've completed a discovery, review and remediation the next step is to extend your ActiveNav Cloud discovery scope to include additional data locations and repositories.