Connecting Multiple Systems for CCPA Compliance

Problem & Background

When the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was announced in 2018, one of Vertex’s major customers in the automobile repairs franchising business approached us to help them comply with the new law.

The challenge for our client was the fact that due to the sheer nature of their business, their customer data was spread across multiple systems and segmented across various brands. These systems ranged from traditional relational databases to modern cloud platforms with sophisticated APIs for communication.

They needed a solution that integrated all of these systems and could help obfuscate customer information with the press of a button.

The Vertex Solution

Mulesoft, with its revolutionary API-led connectivity architecture, tools and AnyPoint platform was a perfect fit for the our client’s use case. MuleSoft offers connectors to communicate with legacy systems as well as all major SAAS platforms. These connectors combined with their AnyPoint Studio IDE allowed us to quickly build out the APIs to spec with drag and drop tools.

We took stock of our customer’s systems and the customer segments we needed to interact with and carved out a flexible spec in collaboration with stakeholders. MuleSoft’s Anypoint API Design Center and API Exchange fostered quick iterations on the API design due to increased visibility and collaboration, and lead to a quicker turnaround time and fewer issues down the line.

Within a couple of months, we were able to design and build an API that allowed the flexibility to obfuscate customer info at an individual segment level, across multiple segments & brands, or across all of our customer’s systems.

Key Benefits and Results

• Vertex Computer Systems’ solution allowed simple obfuscation of customer data at:
  • Individual segment/brand level
  • Multiple segment/brand level
  • All segments/brands
• The multi-layered API architecture facilitates reusability

As a result, the client was easily able to comply with CCPA laws, and the API architecture will be easily adaptable to any future consumer privacy laws that might be passed.

Why Vertex?

Vertex brought a thorough understanding of MuleSoft’s architectural principles, their AnyPoint platform and the developmental tools to build a MuleSoft Center of Excellence for this business. Due to our extensive experience, we can help you carve out the right people, process, and technical structure to leverage MuleSoft and the Anypoint platform effectively.

Who was the Chief Technologist on the Project?

Suraj Pillai, a master Salesforce Architect with multiple certifications, specializing in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud, and Custom Application Development on the Lightning Platform.

Who Else Could This Solution Help?

The CCPA and other consumer protection privacy laws like the GDPR have affected businesses with an online presence.

Holding companies, with their multiple brands and often disconnected systems, must deal with these regulations like anyone else but may be dealing with massive inefficiencies because of those disconnected systems.

The implementation of an API-driven customer obfuscation system could more easily adapt to new regulations as other consumer protection laws are passed.