Overview

The Data Cleaner module ensures a detailed and extensive search for Personal Identifiable Information (PII) through all pages in Confluence and all tickets in Jira. In addition, it has many built-in tools, which are facilitating and automating the work with sensitive data at all stages: tracking, sending comments and notifications, reporting, and ample opportunities for customization.

The main provided features are:

• pattern-based search (most popular and widely used built-in patterns and custom search via regular expressions)

• search of a specific user's personal data

• automated comments and notifications for other team members

• rules triggered by event, allowing to track all changes (creation of ticket/page/blog post, etc.) in real time

Data Cleaner Dashboard

The starting point of working with the Data Cleaner is the Data Cleaner Dashboard. 

Find the Apps tab on the top of the start page, click on it and choose the Data Protection and Security Toolkit in the dropdown menu. After that, you’ll see the Data Protection and Security Toolkit Home page, where you’ll find the Search for personal data section with the Data Cleaner button. Click on it and view the Data Cleaner Dashboard.

Open

Data Cleaner Dashboard

The Data Cleaner Dashboard provides an overview of all created templates for search and data processing (short description, current status) and allows you to:

1. Quickly enable or disable templates

2. Start or stop the search

3. Navigate to the

Actions' menu to edit, clone, or delete the template, to view its status and history, or to clean history

Also, you see two buttons – the Create custom template button for creating a template with parameters set by yourself and the Create search user template button for creating a template with predefined parameters. Let’s find out how to create a new template.

Templates creation

Custom template

Click on the Create custom template button to create your own template. After that, you will see a page with two sections and fields that you should fill in:

• General configuration

• Fields processing

General configuration

Open

General configuration

Let’s take a look at the General configuration parameters in detail:

After all the fields are filled in, click the Save and Continue button and navigate to the Fields processing tab.

Fields processing

In the Fields processing section, you set what fields the search must go through, create rules and add actions that will be applied to the rules.

Fields

Here is an overview of the fields settings:

After you set the fields parameters, navigate to the rules settings below on the page.

Rules

In this area, you can define what exactly you are going to search for. Using rules settings, you can:

• create a new rule

• add rules from the library

• check rules on the issue for Jira, or check rules on the page for Confluence

Let’s take a look at it in detail.

• New rule creation: In order to define your own custom rule, click on the Create new rule button and view the Create rule window.

Here is an overview of the rule parameters which you can set:

Fill in all the fields and click the Save button to save your settings. After that, your rule will be displayed on the page.

• Adding rules from the library: In order to use built-in rules, click on the Add rule from library button and pick one or multiple built-in rules, then click on Add selected rules. 

You can tick the box Select all and create a template with all built-in patterns, or narrow down the scope by further filtering the data.

Built-in patterns can be filtered by a particular country (for example, Germany, Austria, Italy) or a personal data type (for example, phone and credit card numbers), or both. To use the filter, start typing the name of the country or the personal data type, and the system automatically will show existing built-in patterns.

A Jira Administrator is able to edit, disable and delete the rules – just click on the settings button for the required rule.

• Checking rules on the issue (Jira)/page (Confluence): Using this option, you can preview the content that matches the rule in the exact ticket of Jira or the exact page of Confluence. To do that, select your fields for searching and create at least one rule. After that, you can:

  • in Jira: click on the Check rules on the issue button and enter the ticket key in the Check issue matches window

  • in Confluence: click on the Check rules on the page button and enter the page title in the Check page matches window

If there is any data that matches the rule in this ticket/page, you’ll see the table with all found items right in the Check issue/page matches window:

After you set the rules, navigate to the actions settings at the bottom of the page.

Actions

The app allows you to leave standard comments on all vulnerable tickets/pages and to create and send automated notifications to employees responsible for these tickets/pages. If the personal data are not important for the company or were added by mistake, they can be found and replaced by any text, for example, XXX or ### combination. Click on the Add action button and fill in the fields of the Issue Action window:

Let’s take a look at the actions parameters in detail:

Click the Save button in the Issue Action window after setting the actions.

Now, your template is completed.

Predefined search user template

Click on the Create search user template button to create a predefined template. Firstly, you will see a window where you should select the user whose information you want to find:

• in Jira: select username from the dropdown menu, and click on the Create button

• in Confluence: start typing a username in the field, find the user in the dropdown menu, and click on the Create button

After that, you will see the page with two sections:

• General configuration

• Fields processing

As the template is predefined, all its parameters are already set up, and you can directly start using it.

General configuration

Let’s take a look at the General configuration parameters in detail:

Fields processing

In the Fields processing section, there are settings of the fields the search must go through and settings of the search rules and actions.

Fields

Here is an overview of the field settings:

After you set the fields parameters, navigate to the rules settings at the bottom of the page.

Rules

In this area, you can define what exactly you are going to search for. Rules Search user key, Search user email, Search user name, and Search user data {user name} are already added and enabled.

Actions

There are no actions in the template by default, but you can add them if necessary.

Click the Save button in the top right corner of the page to save your changes of the template.

Search

On the Dashboard, you see the created template.

Click on the Start button in Actions column to start the search for personal user data. It can take some time depending on the amount of content in your Jira or Confluence.

While the search performs, you can see the information panel at the top of the Dashboard where it is indicated which template is running, by whom it is run, and its current status:

When the search is done, you see a check mark in the History column. After every execution, you will see a new check mark next to the previous one. Click on it, and you will see search results for the respective execution on the History page:

In Jira, on this page, you see project names where affected content was found (Project column), keys of the affected tickets (Key column) and the names of the ticket (Summary column), part of the ticket, where the personal data were found (Field column), names of the performed rules (Rule column) and names of the related actions (Action column), was the action applied or not (Status of action column), and the Check case feature (Inspect column), allowing you to form an ignore list. See more information about the ignore list below.

In Confluence, on this page, you see space names where affected content was found (Space column), IDs (ID column) and names (Title column) of the affected pages or blog posts, fields where the data was found (Field column), names of the performed rules (Rule column) and names of the related actions (Action column), was the action applied or not (Status of action column), and the Check case feature (Inspect column), allowing you to form an ignore list. See more information about the ignore list below.

You can filter the results by project/space, object, status, and rule, and export the results in CSV or JSON format.

Ignore list

Let’s take a look at the Check case feature in detail.

Click on it, and view the Case window, where the information about the exact case is displayed:

In this window, you can see where the affected content was found, what rule was performed for this, and the content itself. If it’s necessary to skip certain content in subsequent searches, choose the Ignore certain content, field and rule option in the Take action dropdown menu and click Save. After that, when you start the search, this match in the certain field will be ignored.

To skip some text, that you set in the search rules, pick the Ignore specific text option and enter the text in the Text to ignore field. After that, when you start the search, this match will be ignored in all the fields.

If you set content to ignore, you see which specific texts or rules are ignored in the Fields processing section of the template settings:

You can delete any elements from the ignore list when necessary.

Now, you are ready to manage the sensitive data with Data Cleaner in your instances.