Data access control
Providing your network of IBM Food Trust organizations with access to your data is controlled by your organization's data access control policy. These policies grant data access to your partner organizations (your supply chain partners and business transaction partners) based on two factors: data type and supply chain proximity.
Data types:
- Product and facility (location) data
- Product events
- Business transactions
- Documents
- User-defined data types (such as test results or temperature readings)
Supply chain proximity:
- Transaction partner (direct exchange of the product instance); or
- Supply chain partner (shared product instance but no direct exchange).
IBM Food Trust provides a choice between two data access control policies for your organization:
- Policy 1 - Source to destination transparency OR
- Policy 2 - One up, one down transparency
Policy 1 - Source to destination transparency
As the name suggests, the Source to destination transparency data access control policy enables your data to be shared up and down the full length of the supply chain for any specific product instance (GTIN). However, any other organization along that supply chain can halt this sharing by restricting access to their data. Therefore, you can ensure only that your transaction partners (which can be viewed as adjacent supply chain partners) can view your shared data. Your transaction partners always have the capability to block further sharing because their data uploads are required to continue the chain of data access.
For this reason, it is important to understand that the enablement of sharing your data with your intended supply chain partners does not necessarily guarantee their capability for viewing it.
Data shared with ALL supply chain partners and transaction partners: Product events and product (item) and location (facility) data for a lot, pallet, or container are shared with the organizations that send or receive that lot, pallet, or container. Business transaction data (such as purchase orders and shipping notices) are always restricted to the transaction partner only.
Example: ALL events and product and location data that reference the same peanut butter cookies lot are shared with all supply chain partners and transaction partners for the lot.
Data shared ONLY with the transaction partner: Business transaction data, including Purchase Orders (PO), Despatch Advice (DA/ASN) and Receive Advice (RA) documents, are shared and visible ONLY to the transaction partner involved in the specific exchange of the product instance.
Example: The Purchase Order for a peanut butter cookies lot, sent by the retailer to a supplier (transaction partners), is not shared with any other organization on the supply chain for the lot.
Policy 2 - One up, one down transparency
As the name suggests, the One up, one down transparency policy is more restrictive than the Source to destination transparency policy. The One up, one down transparency policy limits sharing of all data to ONLY your transaction partners (which can be viewed as adjacent supply chain partners). Your transaction partners have no capability to share the data further up or down the supply chain.
Data shared only with the transaction partner: Product events, product and location data, and transaction documents, including Purchase Orders (PO), Despatch Advice (DA/ASN), and Receive Advice (RA), are visible ONLY to the transaction partner involved in the specific exchange of the product instance.
Example: Event data for the receiving of peanut butter cookie ingredients for the lot, uploaded by the ingredients receiver, is visible ONLY to the supplier of the ingredients (the transaction partner for the event).