Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

June 26, 2015

Topic Maps For Sharing (or NOT!)

Filed under: Cybersecurity,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 1:14 pm

This is one slide (#38) out of several but I saw it posted by PBBsRealm(Brad M) and thought it was worth transcribing part of it:

From the slide:

Why is Cyber Security so Hard?

No common taxonomy

  • Information is power; sharing is seen as loss of power

[Searching on several phrases and NERC (North American Electricity Reliability Corporation), I have been unable to find the entire slide deck.]

Did you catch the line:

Information is power; sharing is seen as loss of power

You can use topic maps for sharing, but how much sharing you choose to do is up to you.

For example, assume your department is responsible for mapping data for ETL operations. Each analyst is using state of the art software to create mappings from field to field. In the process of creating those mappings, each analyst learns enough about those fields to make sure the mapping is correct.

Now one or more of your analysts leave for other positions. All the ad hoc knowledge they had of the data fields has been lost. With a topic map, you could have been accumulating power as each analyst discovered information about each data field.

If management requests the mapping you are using, you output the standard field to field mapping, with none of the extra information that you have accumulated for each field in a topic map. The underlying descriptions remain solely in your possession.

With topic maps, you can share a little or a lot, your call.

PS: You can also encrypt the values you use for merging in your topic map. Which could enable different levels of merging for one map, based upon a level of security clearance. An example would be a topic map resource accessible by people with varying security clearances. (CIA/NSA take note.)

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