Information
is power in today's business environment. It has grown to be an asset from an
advantage, an imperative from initiative. It has moved from providing hindsight
to insight and foresight. As information has grown to be a strategic part of business,
Business Intelligence (BI) also has started figuring among the top priorities
of an enterprise. BI systems provide deep insights into the business processes,
financial information, customers and products, and render tremendous value to
users. When we talk of users, the list is not restricted to associated employees,
stakeholders, vendors and customers, but includes unfriendly entities like competitors
and hackers as well. BI environments contain complete and accurate information
about the enterprise. The trend in BI is to integrate data from the transactional
systems such as ERP and CRM, thereby providing a single verifiable version of
truth. Better analytical tools are providing more granular details drilling deep
into aggregated data. This sort of information, while being a priceless asset
to the enterprise, could also pose a significant security risk. While security
aspects of mission-critical operational applications are well understood by most
enterprises, the security measures needed to be built into the BI environment
are often overlooked, leaving the enterprises seriously exposed.
ecurity
of Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications is reasonably structured
and static. These are specific applications used by people with specific functions,
accessing specific data pertinent to their domain. The tools, infrastructure,
the data structure, and even the way in which the data is accessed do not vary
widely. In contrast, the BI systems have a broader user population that is constantly
changing as well.
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