Preventing indexing of PII data

Recommendations

This topic describes how to filter out personally identifiable information (PII) data to prevent indexing of this in Episerver Search & Navigation (formerly Episerver Find). This is an important part when managing GDPR compliance.

How it works

IGDPRConventions and ITrackSanitizerPatternRepository are used for adding the filtering.

Conventions

IGDPRConventions has these methods.

Description	Sample
Set patterns to remove GDPR data from a search query.	public virtual void SetGDPRPatterns(List<GDPRPattern> gdprPatterns)
Get the GDPR patterns to be removed in search query	public virtual IEnumerable<GDPRPattern> Get GDPRPatterns()
Delete the GDPR data in the search query that matches the patterns.	public string RemoveGDPRDataInQuery(string queryStringQuery)

ITrackSanitizerPatternRepository

The ITrackSanitizerPatternRepository has these methods.

Method description	Sample
Add patterns to remove PII data from search query
Add single pattern	public string Add(TrackSanitizerPattern pattern)
Add multiple patterns	public void Add(IEnumerable<TrackSanitizerPattern> patterns)
Update patterns to remove PII data from search query
Update single pattern	public string Update(TrackSanitizerPattern pattern)
Update multiple patterns	public bool Update(IEnumerable<TrackSanitizerPattern> patterns)
Get patterns to remove PII in search query
Get all patterns	public IEnumerable<TrackSanitizerPattern> GetAll()
Get pattern by Id	public TrackSanitizerPattern Get(string patternId)
Delete PII data in the search query that matched the patterns
Delete pattern by Id	public void Delete(string patternId)
Delete all patterns	public void DeleteAll()

Example

The patterns support plain text, wildcard, regex. Here are some example filters.

Full name: “John Smith”, “Steven” …
Keyword contains email: “*@gmail.com”, “*@yahoo.com” …
Regex string: “\w+([-+.]\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+([-.]\w+)*” …

public class Sample
  {
    protected IClient _client;
    protected IStatisticsClient _statisticsClient;
    protected ITrackSanitizerPatternRepository _trackSaniziterRepository;
    public Sample(IClient client)
      {
        _client = client;
        _trackSaniziterRepository = new DefaultTrackSanitizerRepository(_client);
      } 
    // Setting and add sanitizer patterns.
    _trackSaniziterRepository.Add(new List<TrackSanitizerPattern>
      {
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          { 
            PatternString = "admin", 
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.PlainText 
          },
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          { 
            PatternString = "email",
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.PlainText 
          },
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          { 
            PatternString = "*@mail.com", 
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.Wildcard 
          },
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          {
            PatternString = "1#1", 
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.Wildcard 
          },
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          { 
            PatternString = "c[a-e]ll", 
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.Wildcard 
          },
        new TrackSanitizerPattern 
          { 
            PatternString = @"\w+([-+.]\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+([-.]\w+)*", 
            PatternType = TrackSanitizerFilterType.Regex 
          }
      });

    // Doing Tracking behavior
    var result = _client
      .UnifiedSearchFor(@"email admin admin@mail.com admin1@mail.com 
        admin2@mail.com ball bell bill 121 131 141 call cell")
      .StatisticsTrack()
      .GetResult();

    // Try to get GDPR data by keyword matched sanitize pattern.
    var response = _statisticsClient.GetGDPR("@mail.com", x => { });
  };

Installation and verification

In the steps below we describe how to implement and verify the PII filtering.

Prerequisites

Episerver Alloy sample site installed from the Episerver Visual Studio Extension.
Episerver Search & Navigation service URL and default index name, for example http://es-api-test01.episerver.com/<PRIVATE_KEY>.
Episerver Search & Navigation client-side resource base URL, for example https://dl.episerver.net/13.2.0.
Episerver Search & Navigation 13.2.0

Installation

In Visual Studio, set the default project to Templates.Alloy.
Install the following NuGet packages (use the “-pre” option to get latest development package).

Find.Cms
Find.Statistics

Open the Alloy web.config file and update the following entries:
- In the <episerver.find> tag
  - serviceUrl
  - defaultIndex
- In the <episerver.find.ui> tag
  - clientSideResourceBaseUrl
Access Admin Mode and add a GDPR test page.
1. Go to CMS > Admin Mode > Content Type tab > Page Types > [Specialized] Start Page > Settings.
2. Click Available Page Types and check [Specialized] Find GDPR API Demo Page and click Save.
3. Go to the CMS Edit > navigation pane > Pages tab > Start branch of the tree structure.
4. Create a GDPR Seach page and publish it.
5. Return to CMS > Admin Mode.
6. Under Scheduled jobs, click Episerver Find Content Indexing Job and start that job manually.

Verification

In these steps we perform a search, delete the GDPR-related data, and add a filtering pattern to prevent it from being indexed.

Open the GDPR Demo page created in previous steps. Clear the GDPR pattern settings to verify that the tracking function is running well.
Go to the search page and execute a search with some keywords.
Go to the GDPR Demo page and review the displayed data.
Delete the existing GDPR data and set patterns to prevent it.
Search again and recheck for the GDPR data. This should now have been filtered out.