In our previous post, we talked about the growing need for data privacy solutions. We looked at the challenges presented by production database proliferation and discussed how IBM Optim Data Privacy and IBM Optim Test Data can work together to apply data privacy rules even as you’re subsetting data for testing.
But here’s where things can get complicated. 
If you’re working in a midsized or large organization, you probably have very few one-off applications. More than likely, your business solutions are highly networked and share data constantly.
This means you’re going to have to figure out how to privatize data across applications. You’ll need a way of masking data consistently in each solution, so that all the applications that share that data can still be tested together using meaningful data.
Case Study: Data Masking Across PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite
The key here is to use consistent mapping algorithms that you can apply heterogeneously across all applications. From there, you’ll be able to test applications that run on different types of hardware, operating systems, and databases.
IBM Optim provides a platform for doing just that.
Let’s see how this works in the real world. A major pharmaceutical company recently approached Estuate with a significant data privacy challenge. They were sharing employee data across PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite, and they wanted to test the applications together.
The company was already using IBM Optim to protect its PeopleSoft data and wanted to start using it to protect data in Oracle, too. But the data had to be masked consistently in both applications, in order to support end-to-end test processes.
Our job, then, was to figure out which data elements were common to both systems. That’s where you really get into the nitty-gritty of any data masking project. Different enterprise systems typically have their own ways of depicting the same data. For example, due to different field lengths, one system might display “XYZ Corporation” while another displays “XYZ Corp.” Or, one system might provide five lines to enter a customer address while another only provides four.
IBM Optim Rises to the Challenge
Our masking project had to take into account the different data definitions across PeopleSoft and Oracle. But IBM Optim was up to the task. We built a job in Optim to extract data from the company’s HR database, masked eight columns of the data, verified the masked data against the corresponding PeopleSoft database, and provided a knowledge transfer to the company’s staff.
Now, the company can use its masked HR production data to test new development on PeopleSoft or Oracle without worrying about costly data breaches – even if the company uses third-party consultants. In an age of constant threats to data, that’s certainly one less thing to worry about.
Read another Estuate success story with IBM Optim Data Privacy.
