Thanks for your lengthy reply. I agree with you that whatever solution we talk about, whether it will be watermarks, conditional formats, custom controls, different namespaces, etc., the problem remains that you can always "trick" in managed end-user reporting by adding simple texts etc. Governed reporting in this case means that the development process is according to a defined pipeline with data coming from governed sources only (with data lineage and controlled processing in reports). The challenge is that the same data can be used for managed end-user BI, but developed outside of the strict pipeline and also could be combined with data from non-governed sources (p.e. uploaded files). In the portal itself there is a clear distinction in folders between what is governed and managed end-user, but when people download or receive the output by mail, the difference is not immediately clear. What i want to achieve is that by default a governed report get some kind of a mark, that off course could be added manually but with quite some fuss. At least this gives already a mark that the reports differ for an end-user. We do have the policies in place, but as you know we technically mitigate for the potential villains.
All the answers and suggestions gave me a lot of possible solutions to work on. I will let you know what we implemented in the end.
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Robert Peter den Heijer
ING Nederland
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Original Message:
Sent: Wed February 21, 2024 03:02 AM
From: Marc Reed
Subject: Can you add a non-removable watermark like a picture / text to a report to distinguish it from "normal" reports
What an interesting challenge. Given nothing can't be forged it really is a tricky problem! As you know, anything you put into a governed report could easily be replicated in a user report. For example, put something into a governed report that shows a trusted servers IP address, a managed report could just add a text box with a maually typed in replica. I think the potential to solve this comes down to who you are trying to show the evidence of a reports lineage to.
Is it that someone running a report needs to know if it's a governed report?
Or is it someone receiving an output who may not even log into Cognos, such as a scheduled emailed attachment, needs to know that it's a governed report?
Even email from addresses can be easily spoofed so a second Cognos instance could be spoofed.
PDFs offer something called electronic seals that offer a genuine proof of authenticity, but that isn't available within Cognos.
I suppose there is a question about would any of your users who are creating content ever want to try and forge these outputs to look like governed reports. In a public facing system I could understand this being a worry. But in an internal corporate system policies could dictate that users shouldn't do this. Which makes the challenge a little easier.
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Marc Reed
Original Message:
Sent: Mon February 19, 2024 03:06 AM
From: Robert Peter den Heijer
Subject: Can you add a non-removable watermark like a picture / text to a report to distinguish it from "normal" reports
we offer two " flavors" on our reporting portal : governed reports and managed end-user reports. Both flavors can be selected by an organizational unit. As both are created in the report module and look the same, we want to add a non-removable watermark signature to a template (governed reports can only be developed on a test platform) to distinguish these reports online and as saved output from normal reports. Most challenging is to create it in such a way that the watermark cannot be removed at a later stage or added to a normal report.
Does anyone had a similar demand and was able to solve it or do people have ideas how to configure the Cognos platform to enable this?
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Robert Peter den Heijer
ING Nederland
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