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User Data Anonymization#

Overview#

Critical Manufacturing MES records the account of the user who creates or changes an object in the CreatedBy and ModifiedBy properties. When the MES replicates data to the Data Platform, it replaces each of these accounts with the ID of the user, so the data stored in the Data Platform does not hold them.

The Data Manager turns the user ID back into the identity of the user when it returns the data, but only for users with the CmfDataSet.IdentityAccess security feature. Users without the security feature see the user ID.

This applies to all data read through the Data Manager:

  • Data Sets queried through OData, for example from Grafana, Power BI, or Excel.
  • Reports in Analytics Views.

What Is Anonymized#

The MES anonymizes the CreatedBy and ModifiedBy values in the following data:

Data Columns Where the value is
Entity tables in the Operational Data Store (ODS), such as CoreDataModel_T_Material CreatedBy, ModifiedBy In the column.
Smart tables and generic tables in the ODS _CreatedBy, _ModifiedBy In the column.
System tables in the ODS, such as Security_T_User or Config_T_Config CreatedBy, ModifiedBy Inside the Data column, which holds the row as a JSON document.
dbo_T_ServiceHistory in the ODS _CreatedBy In the column.
Tables built from an IoT Event Definition in the Canonical Data Model (CDM) CreatedBy and ModifiedBy of the main entity, and ModifiedBy of each entity it references In the property of the event.

Table: Data where user accounts are replaced by user IDs

Each value takes one of the following forms:

Case Value
The account belongs to a user of the MES. The ID of the user, for example 42.
The account does not belong to any user, for example a removed user or a service account that is not a user. -1
There is no account. Empty

Table: Anonymized values

A value of -1 cannot be turned back into an identity, even for users who hold the CmfDataSet.IdentityAccess security feature.

What Is Not Anonymized#

Only CreatedBy and ModifiedBy are anonymized. Other properties that hold a user account, such as the user of a signature or the owner of an object, keep the account. If such a column must not reach the users of a Data Set, leave it out of the query of the Data Set.

User data anonymization does not apply to Employee data. The system reports show the ID of the Employee, and the CmfDataSet.IdentityAccess security feature does not change it.

Showing User Identities#

The Data Manager shows the identity of a user in the form User Name (User Account), for example John Smith (jsmith), when both of the following are true:

Who Can See User Identities#

  • Administrators always hold the CmfDataSet.IdentityAccess security feature.
  • When the GUI Feature Level security is inactive, every user holds it. For more information, see Security Levels.
  • Any other user holds it only through a role. To grant it, assign the feature to a role of the user. For more information, see Assigning Roles to a Feature.

On a new installation, no role holds the feature. A system upgraded from version 11.2.3 or later keeps the assignments made by that version, which assigned the feature to every role that existed at the time.

A change to the roles of a user applies to the next query. When you assign the feature to a role, or unassign it, the change can take up to 10 minutes to apply.

User Identifier Fields#

The User Identifier option is enabled by default in the following cases:

  • The system Data Sets and IoT Event Definitions of the MES.
  • The fields of ODS Data Sets whose name ends in CreatedBy or ModifiedBy, for the Data Sets that exist when you install or upgrade the MES.

For any Data Set or IoT Event Definition that you create, enable the option yourself on each field that holds a user ID.

Enterprise Data Platform and Data Silos#

When you operate in Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) mode, the following rules also apply:

  • For CDM and DWH tables, the query must include the AppProperties_DataSilo column. Otherwise, the Data Manager returns the user IDs. The ODS tables do not need it.
  • Rows that come from an external Data Silo always show the user ID.

Changes to User Names#

The Data Manager keeps the identity of each user in memory for 24 hours. After you change the name of a user, Data Sets and reports can show the previous name for up to 24 hours. The stored data does not change, because the user ID stays the same.

To show the new name at once, restart the Data Manager. To change how long the Data Manager keeps the identities, set the DATAMANAGER_USERS_CACHE_EXPIRATION_HOURS environment variable, in hours.