Developing a Framework for Secure, Transparent Data Movement throughout Your Institution

We all have data moving between hundreds of interconnected applications and systems. Many of these connect and flow to or from certain key systems on the campus. Applications are added over time, using a number of different methods, tools and mechanisms to enable the exchange of critical data, often in unique ways best suited to that specific application, rather than the institution's practices. This past year we undertook a strategic effort to catalog, understand, and rethink the way data moves between these systems. Using a strong data governance framework, commercial tools, and guiding principles, we redeveloped data movement throughout our applications. This helps the institution in several critical ways. It increases the transparency for users about what data of theirs we store and where. This will also enable the staff throughout the campus to better access data that could inform their decision-making. This approach dramatically increases cybersecurity around critical data by having modern, managed, and understood workflows instead of ad-hoc connections. In this talk, we will discuss our approach to help guide the institution toward such an approach, including our successes and failures. We will work closely with the audience to understand potential challenges at their institutions, and together we will work to help provide people with a strategy to move their institution toward a more cohesive, secure approach to data movement and transparency.