This organization is a world leader in communications technology. It provides hardware, software, and services to enable the full value of connectivity.

A global communications network on a globe

Employees:

90,000+
Granted patents:

More than 60,000
Annual revenue:

Over $25 billion

Summary

Challenges

Thousands of customer change and support requests to manage each month.
Complex IT processes slow client service delivery.
Geographically distributed IT staff.

Solution

Combine data privacy and discovery for success.
Develop REST API for automatic data encryption.
Maintain referential integrity while supporting fast resolution time.

Results

Achieved fast issue resolution
Created new data privacy solution
Improved compliance to mitigate security risk

Challenges

High volume of customer change requests risked inefficiency
Complex IT processes created bottlenecks in service delivery
Distributed IT staff across locations required maximum regulation compliance

This organization supports communications service providers in their digital transformation. This helps increase their efficiency, improves their end-users’ digital experience, and taps into new revenue streams. Thousands of customer change or support requests are managed every month by the IT helpdesk. The company is focused on innovation, so when inefficiencies were identified in managing customer requests, it was soon decided to introduce a new customer ticketing system to streamline processes and improve client service delivery.

The organization’s strategic product manager explains further, “We knew that the new ticketing system would help deliver our SLA commitments and result in higher customer satisfaction. However, before implementing this, we needed to consider the security implications of it, as we do with any technology we adopt. A major percentage of the world's mobile traffic passes through equipment supplied or networks managed by us, and this unique global position comes with the responsibility to be a thought leader in security. Our information security ensures that all types of information are protected from unauthorized access or modification, handled according to sensitivity levels, and available when needed.”

Customer tickets typically contain sensitive data such as phone numbers, MSIDNS, IMEI, and IP addresses. With support staff geographically distributed, adherence to the highest level of data privacy is vital to assure compliance with global data privacy regulations.

Icon of a lock in a global communications network

We can confidently share ticket data in any region to be worked on by specialist agents, while guaranteeing data privacy regulation compliance to our downstream customers.

Strategic Product Manager
Leading Global Telecom Services Provider

Solution

The organization liked OpenText’s out-of-the-box thinking as it formulated a solution taking into account detailed requirements. Performance and stability were key in the process, as each ticket could potentially trigger thousands of service requests.

Products deployed

OpenText™ Voltage™ SecureData Servers

Secure data at scale with proven format-preserving data protection
OpenText™ Knowledge Discovery

Gain insights with knowledge discovery for any repository or format

Services provided

OpenText™ Professional Services

Modernize your information management with certified experts

Combine data privacy and discovery for success

The team prepared a request for proposal (RFP) but found that there wasn’t a ‘ready’ solution to tick all their boxes. The organization’s strategic product manager commented, “We needed a solution that would automatically identify and protect sensitive information. This is not an easy task. Not all tickets will include sensitive data and much of the data is unstructured, making it difficult to process. We also had to ensure that implementing this high a level of data security would not negatively affect system performance as our teams need access to work on these tickets as soon as they are submitted. OpenText took the time to sit down with us and go through our requirements in detail. Although they didn’t have a ready-made solution for us either, we liked their out-of-the-box thinking.”

The required capabilities are found in two OpenText solutions: OpenText Data Privacy and Protection, and OpenText Knowledge Discovery. OpenText Data Privacy and Protection leverages format-preserving encryption (FPE) and is ideally positioned to address data privacy compliance. OpenText Knowledge Discovery is designed to analyze unstructured data and forensically examine each file to identify sensitive attributes. The OpenText teams saw an opportunity to integrate the relevant functionality and create a new offering for this organization. The concept was agreed in principle, and OpenText Professional Services was introduced to start the integration work, based on the customer requirements.

Develop REST API for automatic data encryption

OpenText Professional Services developed a REST API to encrypt documents automatically using OpenText Knowledge Discovery and OpenText Data Privacy and Protection. Input files that can contain large-size router log files, for instance, are entered into the encryption engine and scanned for sensitive data using preset parameters with a list of entity types to look for. Each sensitive entity is then encrypted using FPE. The file is reassembled with de-identified sensitive data patterns and sent to the ticketing solution for processing by the assigned agent.

Maintain referential integrity while supporting fast resolution time

FPE is key to referential integrity throughout the ticket’s journey. If in one ticket the same phone number appears in five different log files, using the de-identification engine will encrypt the number to the same value so that, even though it is not the real phone number, it is easy to gain a consistent view of what is happening with that phone number, thereby enabling the issue to be resolved faster. One ticket could potentially trigger thousands of service requests to process, so performance and stability were important factors to consider, to support fast issue resolution time.

Hand using a smartphone with a digital security icon

As a result of leveraging OpenText Knowledge Discovery and Data Privacy and Protection, we now mitigate risk by increasing our data privacy compliance. We have automated a complex process to boost our overall security, while maintaining performance so that our service delivery is fully streamlined.

Strategic Product Manager
Leading Global Telecom Services Provider

Results

With a fast implementation time of just six months, effective collaboration with OpenText Professional Services was essential. The resulting solution has boosted security while maintaining high system performance, ensuring a streamlined service delivery.

Achieved fast issue resolution

"The new OpenText Data Privacy and Protection and Knowledge Discovery-driven solution was very well received and hugely benefits the teams working on the ticketing solution,” said the organization’s strategic product manager.

“We can confidently share ticket data in any region to be worked on by specialist agents, while guaranteeing data privacy regulation compliance to our downstream customers. It occurred to us that there are many other solutions within our organization that would benefit from the capabilities of our de-identification engine. The setup with any other solution is easy to do through APIs, and we are promoting this opportunity as an internal service to our application owners.”

Created new data privacy solution

"This was new territory for all of us,” said the organization’s strategic product manager. “The collaboration between our teams and OpenText Professional Services was entirely trust-based and one where we learned continuously from each other. Many things had to be considered, but within just six months we had a solution that we could start to test and implement. We call it the de-identification engine.”

Improved compliance to mitigate security risk

He concludes, “Working with the OpenText Professional Services teams was a great experience. As a result of leveraging OpenText Knowledge Discovery and OpenText Data Privacy and Protection, we now mitigate risk by increasing our data privacy compliance. We have automated a complex process to boost our overall security, while maintaining performance so that our service delivery is fully streamlined.”

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