DATA WAREHOUSING STRATEGY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Proper data warehousing is very important in every organization. It poses its own set of security challenges. Enterprise Data Warehouses are usually very large systems that serve different communities with different security needs. Because of this, they require powerful, flexible and secure infrastructure. The security capabilities of a good data warehouse must operate scalable and stringently. The benefits of data warehousing include enhance business intelligence, the saving of time, the enhancement of data quality and consistency, it provide historical data intelligence, and in can help contribute to a high return on investment (Tibco, 2015) With this said, security is the core feature of every good data warehouse. DATA WAREHOUSING STRATEGY When developing our data warehouse, the first consideration will be end to end security. A data warehouse is made up of more than just a database. The entire environment involves extraction of data from the operational systems, transportation of data to the warehouse, distribution of data to data marts and analytic serves and the distribution of data to the end user. To seamlessly cater for all these operations, a data warehouse is made up of multiple software and servers. There are seven key elements that need to be incorporated into any data warehousing strategy, including what type of data will be collected, how long will the date be kept for, where will the data be stored, what privacy and security measures should be in place, where can the date be accessed from, what data can be displayed and to what users, and the level of detail that the data needs to contain (TDWI, 2015). Once these elements have been identified the next process would be to create the data warehouse layout in a way to maximize security and reduce threats. DATA WAREHOUSE LAYOUT. Because security of our data is our core concern, our data warehouse will be designed with the security of the data at the final use in mind. In order to protect the data the enterprise data warehouse must have encryption requirements, contain encryption constraints, be properly administered with the correct employees in place within the organization, and an internal control board needs to be created to evaluated regularly to ensure the proper level of security is maintained (Cisa, 2015). Also, the interaction of the data warehouse security and data warehouse architecture is paramount. Because of this, we will install a consolidated data warehouse instead of a dozen heterogeneous data marts. This will result into a centralized data warehouse security that is simple to handle and less expensive. Since the main function of the data warehouse is storage of data, our data warehouse will be designed in such a way to allow flexible multilayer security model on the data in the warehouse while at the same time allowing easy retrieval and dissemination of data to the end user. PLANNING AND EVALUATION OF THE DATA WAREHOUSING STRATEGY This data warehousing strategy will take 6 months to implement and will consist of 6 steps. STEPS OF IMPLEMENTING THE DATA WAREHOUSE STRATEGY . 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Approval of the data warehouse implementation budget Putting together the resources needed to implement the data warehouse Hiring a team of skilled data management professionals. Development of the data warehouse infrastructure. Transfer of data to the data warehouse. HOW WILL THE DATA WAREHOUSE STRATEGY BENEFIT THE ORGANIZATION AND ITS CUSTOMERS? 1. Provide secure storage of data. In business, data is the key to informed decision making. By implementing this data warehousing strategy, the organization will be able to secure its data for future use. 2. Protect the organizational data form security breaches. In the recent times, many organizations have been experiencing organized attacks against their data bases aimed at stealing valuable information. By implementing this strategy, the organization will be able to secure its data against unauthorized access. 3. Allow easy retrieval of data The data warehousing strategy aims at not only maintaining the integrity of the organizations' data, but also ensure easy retrieval and access to the stored data. This will allow the organization to provide higher quality services faster and efficiently to its customers. Furthermore the data can be used by customers, suppliers, product enhancements/sales promotions, purchasing trends, with an overall goal of increasing the sales to the organization as shown in figure 3. By being able to retrieve data easily the organization can use this data to create reports that can be used by suppliers to maintain optimal inventory levels, determine what products are selling the best, to determine what products may need a sales promotion or how a past sale promotion impacted sales, can be used to determine purchasing trends on customers, and can be reviewed to determine customer purchasing habits or likes and dislikes about products (Microsoft, 2015). Along with these benefits the organization can seek to achieve a higher ROI on the data warehousing project, become a smarter organization, and have the ability to identify current and future trends, thus helping to create a successful business. References Cisa. (2015). Data Warehouse Control and Security. Retrieved from http://www.all.net/books/audit/kits/dw.html Microsoft. (2015). Data Warehouse Design Considerations. Retrieved from https://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/aa902672(v=sql.80).aspx TDWI. (2015). 10 Key Elements of Your Data Strategy. Retrieved from https://tdwi.org/articles/2012/01/17/10elements-data-strategy.aspx Tibco. (2015). Top Five Benefits of a Data Warehouse | TIBCO Spotfire's Trends and Outliers. Retrieved from http://spotfire.tibco.com/blog/?p=7597