Data Masking
What is Data Masking?
Data masking is a process of masquerading or hiding the original data with the changed one. In this, the format remains the same, and the value is changed only. This structurally identical, but the wrong version of the data is used for user training or software testing. Moreover, the main cause is to keep the actual data safe on the occasions where it is not required.
Although, the organizations have strict rules and regulations to keep their production data safe, however, in case of outsourcing of data, trouble may erupt. That’s why, most of the companies do not feel comfortable showing their data publicly
Data masking or data obfuscation is the process of modifying sensitive data in such a way that it is of no or little value to unauthorized intruders while still being usable by software or authorized personnel. Data masking can also be referred as anonymization, or tokenization, depending on different context.
The main reason to mask data is to protect information that is classified as personally identifiable information, or mission critical data. However, the data must remain usable for the purposes of undertaking valid test cycles. It must also look real and appear consistent. It is more common to have masking applied to data that is represented outside of a corporate production system. In other words, where data is needed for the purpose of application development, building program extensions and conducting various test cycles. It is common practice in enterprise computing to take data from the production systems to fill the data component, required for these non-production environments.
However, this practice is not always restricted to non-production environments. In some organizations, data that appears on terminal screens to call center operators may have masking dynamically applied based on user security permissions (e.g. preventing call center operators from viewing credit card numbers in billing systems).
Data masking is a way to create a fake, but a realistic version of your organizational data. The goal is to protect sensitive data, while providing a functional alternative when real data is not needed—for example, in user training, sales demos, or software testing.
Data masking processes change the values of the data while using the same format. The goal is to create a version that cannot be deciphered or reverse engineered. There are several ways to alter the data, including character shuffling, word or character substitution, and encryption.
Data masking, also known as data obfuscation, hides the actual data using modified content like characters or numbers.
The main objective of data masking is creating an alternate version of data that cannot be easily identifiable or reverse engineered, protecting data classified as sensitive. Importantly, the data will be consistent across multiple databases, and the usability will remain unchanged.
There are many types of data that you can protect using masking, but common data types ripe for data masking include:
- PII: Personally identifiable information
- PHI: Protected health information
- PCI-DSS: Payment card information
- ITAR: Intellectual property
Data masking generally applies to non-production environments, such as software development and testing, user training, etc.—areas that do not need actual data. You can use various techniques to mask which we will discuss in the following sections of this article.
Who uses Data Masking?
In order to comply with the General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR), companies have shown their interest in applying the data masking to ensure the security of their production data. According to the rules and regulations of the GDPR, all businesses that receive the data from EU citizens must be very well aware of the sensitivity of the issue and take some steps forward to avoid any inconvenience.
Therefore, it becomes inevitable for the companies that they mainstream to keep their sensitive data safe. Meanwhile, there are different kinds of data that can be used, but the following are most frequently used in business fields:
- Protected Health Information (PHI)
- Intellectual property (ITAR)
- Payment cards information PCI-DSS
All of the above examples lie under the obligation that must be followed.
Types of Data Masking
Data masking is a special technique that is applied to make your data non-accessible for non-production users. It is becoming popular among the organizations, and the reason behind this is an escalating cyber security threat. So, to cope with this menace of data, the masking technique is applied. It has different types that serve the same cause, but their way of proceeding remains different. Now, there are two major types, one is static, and the second one is dynamic.
- Static Data Masking In the case of static data masking, a duplicate of the database is prepared, and it is identical to the real database except for those fields that are to be faked or masked. This dummy content does not influence the working of the database at the time of real-world testing.
- Dynamic Data Masking In dynamic data masking, the important information is altered in real time only. So, the original data will only be seen by the users, while the non-privileged users could see the dummy data only. Above are the main types of data masking, but the following types are also used.
- Statistical data obfuscation The production data of the company possesses different figures which are referred to as statistics. The masquerading of these statistics is called the statistical data obfuscation. Non-production users could never have an estimate of actual statistics in this type of data masking.
- On the fly data masking On the fly data masking is applied where environment-to-environment data transferring is done. This type is explicitly suitable for environments that perform continuous deployment for highly integrated applications.
Data Masking Tools
As we all know that technology is making persistent development on a daily basis, and solutions of different problems are getting modified. So, the tools that were available have added a new lot in them with even better efficiency and working quality. Therefore, here we have some of the latest data masking solutions or tools which are used to perform.
More about Data Masking:
https://www.techfunnel.com/information-technology/data-masking/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_masking,
See also: Masking History