Overview

Background

People share information via e-mail, text, chat, phone calls or other applications. Once trust is established between two people (whether given lackadaisically or with caution) information sharing can begin after exchanging phone numbers, addresses, or profiles. Theoretically, in this one-on-one communication between two people, you know who you are sending data to and they know who they are receiving data from. However, if trust is given too freely without validation, one or both actors may not be who they say they are.

In a world where data is shared between systems, the systems are the ones doing the sharing, not people.

The system trust factor is similar to people where if systems want to talk with each other to share information, they must first trust each other and prove who they say they. As is the case with people, if trust is too easily given, a “bad actor” could cause irreparable damage.

To help protect systems from “bad actors” or mistakes, the trust factor is built into each communication and must contain the following two aspects:

1. Some form of security handshake

2. A system-based identifier for “who is who”

Objective

To help fulfill Unified Compliance’s mission statement to be THE authoritative platform for regulatory content, control frameworks, and policy guidance, one of the initiatives is to build products and functionality that extend the usage beyond professional lexicographers and glossarists to include many additional users to allow them to contribute to UC’s content repository.

To facilitate information sharing while ensuring each contributors true identity, we will establish, publicize, share, and use a standardized account structure.

Persona’s

Note: personas are in process of being built. Once in place, the links will be provided to those personas.

• UC Mapper (linguist, English major, attention to detail …)

• UC Mapper Approver (linguist, subject matter experts, …)

• Partner Contributor (expert in their software and processes, not a linguist, busy with other tasks …)

• Customer Contributor (institutional organization knowledge, domain expert, not a linguist, likely minimal compliance knowledge …)

Success Metrics

List project goals and the metrics we’ll use to judge success

Current Challenges / Limitations

There is no established standardized account structure for SaaS applications in general or for GRC solutions in particular. Nor does UC publish or use and standardized account structure for any of its existing applications including Mapper, Dictionary, or the UCF.

With no agreed upon standardized account structure, it makes it difficult for systems and applications to easily communicate and share information with one another.

In particular, third-party partner applications like AuditBoard and ServiceNow have limited direct integration with UCF.

Benefits

Establishing and utilizing a standardized account structure shows UC a thought leader in the GRC space

Makes it easier for third-party applications to integrate with UC applications and meets or beats their requirements as to establishing trust.

Sets a standard for all future UC applications on how to establish trust to facilitate contribution.

Subscription / Pricing / Billing Impacts

There is no direct monetization component tied to Standardized Accounts; however, content contributed by third parties to the public federated database will need to be attributed to the person or organization that contributed the content and data usage will need to be tracked specifically to accounts. Standardized accounts are in integral part of establishing who will be charged and given credit for contribution.

Beta and Early Access

Alpha and Beta access must be made available to selected members of the UC mapping team as they are actively using existing UC applications. Testers can validate both the API Gateway as well as the Mapper / UC 2.0 application.

Partners such as AuditBoard and Service Now might be good candidates to test with their applications, however, until content is made available, the value for establishing trust with no actual sharing is minimal.

Risks and Assumptions

It assumed that third-party applications will have similar enough account requirements that they will be able to setup accounts (primarily using organization, accounts, and users) that they can integrate directly with UC applications once in place.

The user experience must be made easy to use else it could get very confusing as to why organizations, accounts, and users are all needed.

Milestones and Phases

List the project milestones along with how that milestone can be successfully measured.

Product Requirements

Use Cases

Happy Day Scenarios

As a content contributor I am able to quickly set up my organization that I work for, the account that I wish to start using the software with, and my specific user that will perform tasks such as research and contribution.

Rainy Day Scenarios

1. After I setup my organization,

Requirements

Open Questions

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Out of Scope / Future Functionality

List the known features that are out of scope for this project or might be revisited at a later time.

As is case with the assumptions, it is important to list these out so that architects and engineers can plan accordingly for these later updates.

Impacted Product Components

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User Interaction and Design

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Process Flow Diagrams

Links to user journeys, process flow, or other diagrams related to the requirements.

Guides

If there are UI components to this requirement, list the main areas where interactive user guides would be needed.

Additional References

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