Working with external data integration
External data integration lets you seamlessly assimilate data from an external application to
Control Compliance Suite
. You can represent the data by leveraging the CCS dashboards and reports. You can integrate with any external application and use one of the following data connections to import the required data into Control Compliance Suite
:- ODBC data connection
- CSV data connection
- Web service data connection
After you import external system data, you can do any of the following by using the
Control Compliance Suite
infrastructure:- Display the imported data by using theControl Compliance Suitedashboards.
- Correlate the imported data to the existingControl Compliance Suiteassets and evaluate the data in terms of policy compliance and asset risk score.
- View the evaluated data in the compliance-related reports and dashboards along withControl Compliance Suiteevaluation data.
Before you integrate external data systems, you must have a Data Processing Service Connector in your site. The Data Processing Service Connector serves as a means to collect data from any external data system.
To be able to represent the external system data in
Control Compliance Suite
, you must perform the following: - Identify and map the data fields in the external system data toControl Compliance Suiteschema.You can also create a new schema if you do not want to use the existingControl Compliance Suiteschema.
- Associate the imported data fields with theControl Compliance Suitedata attributes, such as asset, assessment, and status. The association of the external system data fields toControl Compliance Suiteattributes ensures that TEST is ready to consume the external data.
A typical workflow for external data integration involves the following tasks in the mentioned sequence:
Specify and add the external system from which you want to import data | The very first step towards external data integration is to specify the data system that you want to integrate with CCS and the site to which you want the job to be routed. |
Specify the database location from where you want to fetch the data | Once you have specified the external data system, you must specify the database location where the external data is stored. |
Specify the data fields that you want to import | You must identify the fields in the imported data that you want to report on. Along with the data field name, you must also specify the data type. |
Select the data schema | Specify whether you want to use the existing CCS schema or create a new schema. A data schema is used to represent the imported data in Control Compliance Suite reports and dashboards. |
Map the data fields to CCS schema fields | You must map the data fields of the imported data to the existing CCS schema. |
Associate imported data to CCS data | Associate the imported data to the format that CCS understands, so that the data can be represented by using the CCS reports and dashboards. |
Schedule data import | After you have specified the required parameters and mapped the data fields, you are ready to import data from the external data system into CCS. You can import data immediately or schedule the import job for later. |
After you configure the external system for data integration, you must do the following:
Create a connection | Create a data connection from the Manage > External Data Integration view. |
Specify the location of the configuration file | Specify the path of the configuration file that contains the configuration details of the external system. |
Import data | Import data from the external system. |
When you have the external data in CCS, you can evaluate the data against the existing CCS policies to generate compliance or risk score aggregation. You can also define custom assessment procedures to evaluate the data.