In today’s data-driven world, safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) is paramount. When leveraging search platforms like OpenSearch, ensuring sensitive data remains confidential is crucial. Enter Phinder, an open-source OpenSearch plugin that leverages the power of the Phileas project to effectively redact and de-identify PII and PHI within your search results.

This post explores how Phinder can bolster your data privacy and security when using OpenSearch.Phinder is available on GitHub at https://github.com/philterd/phinder-pii-opensearch-plugin.

What is Phinder?

Phinder is a specialized OpenSearch plugin designed to seamlessly integrate redaction and de-identification capabilities directly into your search workflow. Built upon the foundation of the open-source Phileas project, Phinder provides a robust and flexible mechanism for identifying and masking sensitive information within your indexed documents. This ensures you can search your data without the risk of exposing PII or PHI, which is essential for compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.

Phileas: The Engine Behind Phinder

Phinder leverages the Phileas project, a powerful engine for identifying and transforming sensitive data. Phileas offers a wide range of capabilities, including:

• Named Entity Recognition (NER): Identifying and classifying named entities like people, organizations, locations, and dates.
• Regular Expressions: Matching patterns for specific data formats like phone numbers, email addresses, and social security numbers.
• Dictionaries: Using lists of known sensitive terms for redaction.
• Customizable Rules: Defining your own specific redaction rules based on your unique data and requirements.

By integrating Phileas, Phinder benefits from its sophisticated analysis and transformation capabilities, providing a comprehensive solution for data protection.

Why use Phinder?

• Enhanced Data Privacy: Phinder gives you granular control over what information is displayed in search results, preventing the accidental exposure of sensitive data.
• Regulatory Compliance: By redacting PII and PHI, Phinder helps your organization meet the stringent requirements of data privacy and security regulations.
• Improved Security Posture: Reducing the risk of data breaches associated with sensitive information.
• Flexible and Customizable: Phinder’s integration with Phileas allows for highly flexible configuration of redaction rules, tailored to your specific needs.
• Open Source and Community Driven: Being open-source, Phinder is free to use and benefits from community contributions and ongoing improvements.

How to Use Phinder

1. Installation: The first step is to install the Phinder plugin within your OpenSearch cluster.  Refer to the Phinder documentation on GitHub for detailed installation instructions specific to your OpenSearch version.
2. Defining Redaction Rules in a Policy (Leveraging Phileas): This is the core of Phinder’s functionality. You’ll leverage Phileas’s capabilities to identify the types of PII and PHI you want to protect (e.g., names, addresses, social security numbers, medical record numbers) and create corresponding rules. You can use regular expressions, dictionaries, or leverage pre-trained NER models provided by Phileas.
3. Testing and Validation: Once you’ve configured Phinder, thorough testing is essential. Run searches against your data and verify that the sensitive information is being correctly redacted and de-identified.
4. Integration with OpenSearch Queries: After testing, you can integrate Phinder directly into your OpenSearch queries. This ensures that redaction happens automatically whenever a search is performed.

The following is an example query that redacts email addresses from the description field.

curl -s http://localhost:9200/sample_index/_search -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d'
   {
    "ext": {
       "phinder": {
          "field": "description",
          "policy": "{\"identifiers\": {\"emailAddress\":{\"emailAddressFilterStrategies\":[{\"strategy\":\"REDACT\",\"redactionFormat\":\"{{{REDACTED-%t}}}\"}]}}}"
        }
     },
     "query": {
       "match_all": {}
     }
   }'

Conclusion

Phinder, powered by Phileas, offers a robust and effective solution for protecting sensitive data within your OpenSearch environment. By implementing Phinder and defining appropriate redaction and de-identification rules, you can significantly reduce the risk of exposing PII and PHI, ensuring compliance and enhancing data privacy. Remember to consult the official Phinder documentation on GitHub for the most up-to-date information and detailed instructions. Protecting sensitive data is a continuous process, and Phinder can be a valuable tool in your data privacy strategy.