The issue of controlling content and privacy popped up in the news last week; as Facebook has reviewed its privacy practices after a new feature exposed private information and wrested control away from users as to what content was shown to whom.
Personally I find the amount of personal information on the public internet astounding and this is just the random non-sensitive information. If my birth date gets out on the web, at worst I might get an extra birthday card or two; but corporate entities cannot afford to let sensitive information become public without often facing heavy legal penalty; not to mention what it does to their reputations. Facebook is reported to be losing users as a result of their miscalculation. The more sensitive the information the larger the risk becomes. Structuring content leads to predictable data. Predictable data leads to predictable areas of sensitivity and predictable areas of sensitive material can be controlled and protected.
Now I am not saying that if Facebook had implemented a more cohesive content model and massaged their content into those structures that they wouldn’t have exposed this private information. But I am stressing the importance of understanding the content structure and which portions will be provided to whom. Content Management Systems are one part of this equation – they should control the content as expected so long as it is stored in the right place. That is the key; so long as it is in the right place.
Structure and predictability are cornerstones of any successful migration. Taking content that was once fragmented and moving all the like parts together into a common structure(s) is the first step. And it can be an undeniably complicated step. With complication comes the need for traceability/auditability; the need to understand where content is going and what that content is. This applies whether that content is within the content model or the content object itself.
Having an auditable process, addresses that need. The Vamosa methodology provides two reports, one of which audits where every object will end up and the second that details what content will exist where within each object. This became an invaluable tool even prior to the content migration for a recent project I was on. We used these reports to discover that two of the security parameters required to control user access to sensitive content were inconsistent in the source content! Without that insight we could have had a Facebook-like situation when it came to the migration execution.
Knowing where your information is, when and how it is being consumed and by whom is important and is an essential component in any smart content migration strategy.
To learn more about where your content may lie download the Five Steps to Discovering the Real Shape of Your Digital Content White Paper.
Personally I find the amount of personal information on the public internet astounding and this is just the random non-sensitive information. If my birth date gets out on the web, at worst I might get an extra birthday card or two; but corporate entities cannot afford to let sensitive information become public without often facing heavy legal penalty; not to mention what it does to their reputations. Facebook is reported to be losing users as a result of their miscalculation. The more sensitive the information the larger the risk becomes. Structuring content leads to predictable data. Predictable data leads to predictable areas of sensitivity and predictable areas of sensitive material can be controlled and protected.
Now I am not saying that if Facebook had implemented a more cohesive content model and massaged their content into those structures that they wouldn’t have exposed this private information. But I am stressing the importance of understanding the content structure and which portions will be provided to whom. Content Management Systems are one part of this equation – they should control the content as expected so long as it is stored in the right place. That is the key; so long as it is in the right place.
Structure and predictability are cornerstones of any successful migration. Taking content that was once fragmented and moving all the like parts together into a common structure(s) is the first step. And it can be an undeniably complicated step. With complication comes the need for traceability/auditability; the need to understand where content is going and what that content is. This applies whether that content is within the content model or the content object itself.
Having an auditable process, addresses that need. The Vamosa methodology provides two reports, one of which audits where every object will end up and the second that details what content will exist where within each object. This became an invaluable tool even prior to the content migration for a recent project I was on. We used these reports to discover that two of the security parameters required to control user access to sensitive content were inconsistent in the source content! Without that insight we could have had a Facebook-like situation when it came to the migration execution.
Knowing where your information is, when and how it is being consumed and by whom is important and is an essential component in any smart content migration strategy.
To learn more about where your content may lie download the Five Steps to Discovering the Real Shape of Your Digital Content White Paper.
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