News
Macro 4 enterprise content management software adds blockchain integration and document redaction for data privacy and compliance
December 2018 by Marc Jacob
Macro 4, a division of UNICOM® Global, has released a new version of its Columbus DW enterprise content management software that helps organizations to strengthen data protection and regulatory compliance. A new document redaction feature restricts access to sensitive personal information by automatically obscuring selected words or images on documents held in the Columbus DW system. To support compliance with regulations governing document processing, Columbus DW integrates with the blockchain to provide an additional trusted record of events such as how, when and by whom documents have been accessed, updated or deleted.
Also new in Columbus DW 8.4 comes support for cloud object storage. This feature enables organizations to reduce costs and increase storage flexibility by moving documents and other unstructured data into the cloud.
These enhancements will be followed in early 2019 by the introduction of a new Columbus mobile app that allows business users to work with documents securely on a smartphone or tablet.
Document redaction provides added protection for sensitive information
Columbus DW 8.4 enables organizations to prevent viewing of sensitive text or images using a variety of redaction methods which include the replacement of selected content with random characters, ‘X’s, black boxes, or blank space. The document itself can still be accessed for operational business use.
Redacted views can be applied to all users or to certain job roles or individuals.
A related capability is data anonymization. This is a process by which ‘live’ production data can be altered to create anonymous document samples for application testing. All original text can be replaced with random, but similar, characters to produce realistic documents for thorough testing, without exposing any real business data.
Blockchain integration delivers trusted audit facility
Columbus DW 8.3 introduced the capability to record document-related events using the same tamper-evident hashing mechanism as the blockchain, with the option to trigger business processes or email notifications when events occur. Columbus DW 8.4 builds on this functionality by enabling the same record to be committed to the blockchain to independently verify that the information has not been tampered with.
Cloud object storage increases affordability and flexibility
Columbus DW customers can now store documents and other unstructured content on cloud object storage. Columbus DW 8.4 supports OpenStack Swift, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and Amazon S3.
“Cloud object storage is relatively low cost and provides greater flexibility because it is very easy to scale as your requirements grow,” said Allum. “We’re giving our customers access to these benefits while ensuring very fast search speeds for users by storing document indexes locally in Columbus DW.”
Customers can choose to ‘mix and match’ storage destinations, for example by moving certain documents to the cloud while keeping others locally.
Both private on premises and public cloud storage is supported.
