Addressing data privacy requests

As a Data Protection Officer or an administrator, you can address the data privacy requests that an individual raises.

Personal data in BMC Helix Innovation Suite

BMC Helix Innovation Suite applications may include users' personal data such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, government ID numbers, locations, credit card numbers, and IP addresses that can identify individuals personally. 

Personal data in BMC Helix Innovation Suite log files

BMC Helix Innovation Suiteretains the data in log files and then the log files are automatically deleted from the BMC cloud. However, on-premises customers can configure the log retention period. For more information, see Enabling-logs.

Personal data used by the BMC Helix Innovation Suite Cognitive Service

BMC Helix Innovation Suite deletes all the conversation logs from the BMC cloud once a week.

For information about the log limits in IBM Watson Assistant, see Log limitsin the IBM Watson  documentation.

For information about IBM Watson GDPR readiness, see GDPR in the IBM Watson documentation.

Capabilities for handling personal data

BMC Helix Innovation Suite provides an administrator the following capabilities to protect the personal data of a user:

• Perform a lookup to find whether any personal data of a user is stored in applications. 
• Provide a user with their personal data in a safe way.
• Replace users' personal data permanently in the applications.

On behalf of a user, an administrator can perform the following operations on the user's personal data:

You must consider the following points while performing operations on personal data:

• You must perform these operations in each environment separately such as development, QA, and production environments.
• You cannot modify or search for the personal data stored in the following components:
  • Attachments stored along with records instances
  • Process definitions
  • Localized strings
• You must not replace the login ID of a user.

To manage data privacy requests in the BMC Helix Innovation Suite database

When a user logs a data privacy request, the Data Protection Officer or administrator must act on the request by searching, extracting, or anonymizing the personal data connected to that user. Personal Data refers to the string that is searched in the database. 

Perform the following steps to use the AR SystemPersonal Data Privacy (PDP) utility to manage data privacy requests in the AR Systemdatabase:

1. Back up the database.
2. In BMC Helix ITSM, select Applications > Personal Data Privacy.
3. Click the PDP Job Console form, and create a job.
4. Enter the details of the requester.
5. On the Personal Data tab, click Add.

6. Enter values in the Personal Data Label and Personal Data fields.

   For example: To search for mmann@apexglobal.com, where mmann@apexglobal.com is the email address, enter Email Address in the Personal Data Label box and mmann@calbroservices.com in the Personal Data box.

   The Replace with box is auto-populated with a string. When the AR Forget operation is executed, the Replace with string replaces the string entered in the Personal Data box.

7. Click Add.
   You can add multiple Personal Data strings in a job for a requester.

8. Click Lock Personal Data to lock the data connected to the requester.

   You can use the Exclusion List or Inclusion List forms. For more details, see Considerations.

9. On the Operations tab, select an operation, and click Execute.
   The following screenshot shows different types of the Execute operations:
   
   The following table describes different types of Execute operations:

   Operation	Description
   AR Search	Search Personal information data in the database and provide result in the Search Result tab.
   AR Extract	Extract the result of AR Search operation in the CSV format.
   AR Forget AR Delete	Extract the result of AR Search operation in the CSV format.

   When the anonymize operation is complete, a message describing the number of records that were anonymized or failed to anonymize is displayed. You can make the required changes in the search results and run the operation again for the failed records.

   

   There might be personal data that is not connected to the user that has requested data privacy request. In this case, examine and modify the search result report to include the personal data that is connected to the user.

   Run the utility for one individual at a time and provide all the possible personal data within the same job to anonymize. This approach produces the optimal number of records to review for the search result of the requester.

   Be sure to anonymize or delete all the personal data of a user in a single operation. Partial anonymization or deletion of personal data for a user might cause data inconsistencies in the database and might result in errors within the database.

Statuses in Personal Data Privacy utility

The following table explains statuses that are displayed across different phases of the Personal Data Privacy utility:

To manage data privacy requests in the Smart IT database

When the Personal Data Privacy (PDP) utility (located in the installationDirectory\BMC Software\Smart_IT\SmartITCustomizationUtil\password-encryption-version-BUILD-SNAPSHOT.zip) runs on the User or People form to anonymize the Login Name field for a requester, the Smart IT database must be updated with the anonymized string.

Perform the following steps to manage data privacy requests in the

Smart IT

database:

1. Double-click to open the PDP utility:
   For Windows: PDPU_SmartIT_DB_Tool-9.1.05-SNAPSHOT\scripts\win\smartit_pdpu_tool.bat
   For Linux: PDPU_SmartIT_DB_Tool-9.1.05-SNAPSHOT\scripts\linux\smartit_pdpu_tool.sh

2. Enter the following command to encrypt the password for the Smart ITdatabase:

   Command in shell mode: pdpu-encrypt-password <your password>

3. Open PDPU_SmartIT_DB_Tool-9.1.05-SNAPSHOT\scripts\win\..\..\config\application.yml in a text editor and update the following database connection details:

   Field	Value
   driver - class - name	Enter the name of the database.
   url	Enter the URL to access the database.
   username	Enter the name of the user who has the permissions to update the database.
   password	Paste the encrypted password (that is copied from step 2) in the following syntax: ENC(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
   tenantid	Enter the tenant ID between the double quotations.

 Considerations for a data privacy operation

Consider the following points while executing a request for a data privacy operation:

• You must configure the list of forms in the following forms:
  • Exclusion List: Specifies the names of forms in which the personal data must not be searched.
    For example: To prevent searching for personal data in the Audit form, you must add the Audit form to the Exclusion List.
  • Inclusion List: Specifies the names of forms in which the personal data must be searched.
• If a form is added to both forms, the Exclusion List takes precedence over the Inclusion List.
• When the Exclusion List or Inclusion List is not configured, personal data is searched in all the forms.
• Before executing AR Extract or AR Forget operations, you must execute an AR Search operation. If you select any operation other than Search, you will get an error.
• Personal data is not searched inside an attachment.
• Personal data in the Last modified by field is not anonymized.
• The anonymization operation cannot anonymize a specific field value if the size of a field is less than the Replace String field value.
• A data privacy operation is not reversible. Before executing the AR Forget operation, make sure that the entered information string is correct.
• When multiple Personal Data records are added to a job, sometimes multiple errors are displayed in the job logs of the AR SystemPersonal Data Privacy utility.

Frequently asked questions about the PDP utility