Guide
How to Protect Confidential Business Information with EPN for SCIP Database
Why you should be concerned
When submitting to the ECHA SCIP database to comply with the Waste Framework Directive, you should definitely be concerned with protecting your confidential business information (CBI). This is because ECHA provides a dissemination portal to give the public, specifically consumers, access to the data that was submitted. Only certain data will be omitted in the dissemination portal. That means, protecting confidential business information lies in the responsibility of the submitter.
opesus EPN for the EU SCIP Database Format allows you to automate your SCIP submissions and provides essential features to protect your data while still being compliant. Our solution works with the confidentiality principles for SCIP that are laid out by ECHA. opesus EPN is highly configurable to map and set values per each customer’s needs. These features include product structure flattening, article ID management, generalizing article names, and masking supplier details. These additional steps will help eliminate the risk of inferences being made to possibly link your notifications to your legal entity.
Combined, these features make opesus EPN for the ECHA SCIP Database Format the most powerful tool for SAP customers to protect CBI while leveraging existing data and processes within their system.
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Option #1
Product Structure Flattening
Product notifications submitted to the ECHA SCIP Database are accessible to the general public via the ECHA SCIP Dissemination Platform. In the example outlined in this article, the full product structure can be viewed by the general public. Therefore, when preparing a SCIP notification, you should take a look at your product structure closely.
When building a product structure for a SCIP notification, there are details of your product structures that you might want to conceal. opesus EPN has the ability to skip mid-level assemblies that exist between a notifiable product and an article-as-such. In other words, you can "flatten" the product structure of the notifiable product.
In SAP EHSM, you can configure the flattening of your product structure. You can configure your system to skip components based on material master-related attributes or the compliance object attributes in SAP EHSM. By utilizing this feature, you can make sure that the necessary articles are reported, without compromising the whole product structure to the public.
Option #2
Article ID Management
The article ID is another data point that is accessible to the general public via the ECHA SCIP Dissemination Platform. Therefore, when identifying your products as articles, it is important not to give away confidential information such as how you set your article ID.
When preparing your product notification for the SCIP database, you can configure your system to set your Primary Article ID in a certain manner. You can choose from a variety of options for the primary article ID when creating an article, such as using a unique identifier based on a part number, using a serial number, item number, or others. In this way, you can actively choose how information about your notifications is displayed in the publicly accessible SCIP Dissemination Platform.
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Option #3
Generalizing Article Names
Similar to the article ID, the article name is accessible to the general public. You can actively take steps to conceal confidential business information by generalizing the names of your articles. For example, when determining article names, we strongly advise not to include any information that relates to your legal entity in the free text fields.
When using opesus EPN for the EU SCIP Database, there are configuration options available to customize how the article names are set. For example, you can configure your system such that the material name is used as the article name, or you can have a specific logic to alter the text to generalize the name.
Option #4
Masking Supplier Details
Last but not least, when submitting product notifications to the SCIP database, you might consider concealing data about your suppliers and supply chain. While you need information about supplier parts for the SCIP notification, you most likely want to protect who your suppliers are.
opesus EPN shows clearly which articles are provided by which supplier. You can view and search by supplier attributes such as by supplier part or supplier name. However, when creating a SCIP notification, details about your suppliers are excluded. Only obligatory information about the supplier part is included. This enables clear visibility of supplier details internally while masking this information to the public in the SCIP Dissemination Portal.
Interested to know more or a demo?
Book a time with our consultant, Manuela Opas! Alternatively, you can send an email to contact@opesus.com
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