The Competition Commission has used ethical hacking to
test electronic document management systems before choosing a
product.
The government organisation, which conducts inquiries into
mergers, markets and the regulation of the major regulated
industries, has rolled out Wisdom from Diagonal Solutions to create
an auditable and secure repository of structured and unstructured
data.
With mergers worth billions of pounds depending on the
commission's decisions, it could be a target for industrial
hacking, said Brian Sallery, the organisation's head of information
services.
"We are slightly neurotic about security, in the nicest possible
way. We hired a professional ethical hacker to see what a malicious
internal user could do to the system, since this is the greatest
threat. We ranked products against what the hacker could do."
The Competition Commission requires stringent document
governance because companies that do not agree with its decisions
can appeal to an independent body.
Although such instances are rare, the commission has to be able
to present all its documentation in relation to the case, the audit
trails associated with them, and be able to guarantee the
authenticity of those documents.
The new system not only fulfils this statutory requirement, it
also places all commission documents in a single, searchable
repository, enabling greater efficiency, Sallery said.
However, IT procurement was only a small part of the project.
"The organisational challenge is probably 80% of the project,
picking a product is almost the easy bit," he said.
"The challenge is winning the hearts and minds of the users and
convincing them this is the direction for the organisation and that
they will benefit."
Sallery advised organisations embarking on large-scale
governance projects to have a business plan that delivers benefits,
not just legislative requirements, and to ensure end-users had the
correct expectations. "Sometimes users' expectations are set too
high. They should understand this is not all going to be easy, it
might get difficult for a while, but it will be worth it," he
said.