Use Identification

This how-to guide is for enabling identification for the first time. For additional information on identification, see the Data identification page.

Requirement: Immuta permission GOVERNANCE

Prerequisites

Identifiers can be added to and identification can run in any of your current domains. However, if you are not already using domains, set up a domain specifically to run identification:

1. Register your data sources.

2. Create a domain.

3. Grant the appropriate users the Manage Identifiers permission for the domain.

Add identifiers to a domain

1. Navigate to the Identifiers tab of your domain.

2. Click Get Started.

3. Add reference identifiers to your domain that are relevant to your data by clicking the checkboxes. The identifier becomes a point-in-time copy of the reference identifier. It has the same name, criteria, and tags. Note you cannot add multiple identifiers with the same name to the same domain, so if you want to add an improved reference identifier, edit the name.

4. Click Add Identifiers.

Add only the identifiers that are relevant to your organization's data

For example, for international data, you may want to enable many different identifiers for many countries, like the built-in "Australia Passport" identifier and the "Finland National ID Number" identifier. However, if you are dealing with United States domestic financial data, those identifiers would be irrelevant. In that case, it would be better to identify the data more likely to appear, like "Bitcoin" or "US Bank Routing MICR".

Create a new identifier

This action can be done within a domain from the Identifiers tab to create a domain-specific identifier, or it can be done from the Identifiers page to create a reference identifier.

1. Click Create New.

2. Enter a name and description for your identifier.

3. Click Next.

4. Enter criteria: Select the Type of criteria.

   1. For regex, enter a regex to be matched against column values. The default criteria encoding is case-sensitive. You can change this encoding using the regex criteria. The regex must use RE2 syntax.

   2. For column name regex, enter a regex to be matched against column names. The default criteria encoding is case-insensitive. You can change this encoding using the regex criteria. The regex must use RE2 syntax.

   3. For a dictionary, enter the values in a comma-separated list to match against column values. Opt to toggle the Case insensitive switch to on if you want the dictionary to be case sensitive.

5. Click Next.

6. Select the tags to apply: Use the text box to search for a tag or type a tag name to create a new tag under the "Discovered . Entity" hierarchy to apply to columns that match your identifier.

7. Click Next to review your new identifier and click Create Identifier to create it.

Note that all user-created identifiers must be a 90% match or greater for the contents of the column to be tagged.

Run identification in your domain

Once you have created identifiers relevant to your data, it is time to run them on your data. You may choose to run identification on a select number of data sources where you understand the data to assess and adjust the tags to reflect what you expect to see.

1. Navigate to the Domains page and select your domain.

2. Open the More Actions icon.

3. Select Run Identification from the dropdown.

View the identification results

After identification runs, you will receive a notification that the job is complete. Then, you can view the results from the data source dictionary.

1. Navigate to the data source overview page of the data source you have in the domain.

2. Click the Data Dictionary tab.

3. Assess whether the tags are applied as expected.

4. If you are happy with the tags, follow the Assign data sources to domains guide to add the rest of your data sources to the domain and then run identification on the domain again.
5. If you want additional tags, follow the Create an identifier guide to create additional identifiers that matter to your data.