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The Art of Masking Data: Safeguarding Privacy in a Networked World

by | Jun 22, 2023 | Data Masking, Data Privacy

In today’s digital age, organizations rely on interconnected applications to streamline operations and enhance productivity. However, this interconnectedness poses a significant challenge when it comes to data privacy. It is essential to mask data consistently across all applications to safeguard sensitive information while enabling comprehensive and meaningful data testing.

In this blog post, we will delve into the importance of data masking, explore the challenges organizations face in maintaining data privacy, and showcase how IBM Optim can address these concerns. Through a real-world case study, we will demonstrate the power of IBM Optim in achieving consistent data masking across applications.

I. The Significance of Consistent Data Masking

In a midsized or large organization, the proliferation of production databases and highly networked business solutions necessitates a robust data privacy strategy. Data masking plays a pivotal role in protecting sensitive information by replacing original data with fictional, yet realistic, data. Consistent data masking ensures that all applications sharing data can be tested together effectively, using meaningful datasets while preserving confidentiality. This approach is crucial in complying with data privacy regulations, safeguarding customer information, and mitigating the risk of costly data breaches.

II. Challenges of Data Masking in a Networked Environment

In a networked environment, where multiple applications share data, ensuring consistent data masking can be complex. Organizations face several challenges, including:

a. Data Variations

Different applications may interpret and store data differently. Variances in field lengths, data formats, or data representations can make it challenging to achieve consistent data masking across applications.

Infographic on 5 Key Steps to Secure Payment Processing
Key Challenges in Data Masking

b. Heterogeneous Systems

Applications may run on diverse hardware, operating systems, or databases. Ensuring consistent mapping algorithms across these heterogeneous systems is critical to maintaining data privacy during testing.

c. Interdependencies

Many applications rely on shared data, making it crucial to mask the data consistently across all interconnected systems. Failure to do so may result in incomplete or inaccurate test results.

Data masking is a pivotal strategy for protecting sensitive information and ensuring meaningful data testing in today’s interconnected business landscape.

III. Case Study: Data Masking Across PeopleSoft and Oracle
E-Business Suite

To illustrate the importance of consistent data masking, let’s examine a real-world scenario. A major pharmaceutical company approached Estuate with a significant data privacy challenge. The company needed to share employee data across its PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite applications while ensuring consistent data masking for comprehensive testing.

The company was already leveraging IBM Optim to protect data in its PeopleSoft application and wanted to extend its usage to Oracle. The primary objective was to mask data consistently in both applications, allowing for seamless end-to-end testing processes without compromising sensitive information. The project involved the following steps:

a. Identifying Common Data Elements

The Estuate team analyzed the data structures of PeopleSoft and Oracle to identify common data elements. This step was crucial in understanding the shared data that required consistent masking across both applications.

b. Addressing Data Definition Variations

Each enterprise system may have its unique way of representing data. Estuate carefully examined the variations in data definitions between PeopleSoft and Oracle and developed a strategy to ensure consistent masking, considering differences in field lengths, formats, and data representations.

c. Leveraging IBM Optim

Estuate utilized the powerful capabilities of IBM Optim to execute the data masking project. A job was built in IBM Optim to extract data from the company’s HR database. The team then masked eight columns of the data, verified the masked data against the corresponding PeopleSoft database, and provided knowledge transfer to the company’s staff.

IV. The Benefits of IBM Optim Data Masking

Implementing IBM Optim’s data masking solution offered significant advantages to the pharmaceutical company:

a. Enhanced Data Privacy

By consistently masking sensitive data across PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite, the pharmaceutical company ensured that confidential employee information remained protected. This proactive approach to data privacy minimized the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches.

Infographic on 5 Key Steps to Secure Payment Processing
Discover the advantages of implementing consistent data masking

b. Compliance with Data Privacy Regulations

With data privacy regulations becoming increasingly stringent, organizations must comply with various mandates such as GDPR or CCPA. IBM Optim’s data masking solution helped the pharmaceutical company meet these compliance requirements by anonymizing personal and sensitive data during testing, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties.

c. Seamless End-to-End Testing

By ensuring consistent data masking across applications, the pharmaceutical company was able to conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing. Testing scenarios involving both PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite applications could be performed using meaningful datasets, enabling accurate evaluation of system interactions and ensuring a higher quality of software releases.

d. Cost Savings

By utilizing IBM Optim’s data masking capabilities, the pharmaceutical company significantly reduced the potential costs associated with data breaches or non-compliance penalties. The investment in data privacy solutions proved to be a cost-effective approach compared to the potential financial and reputational damage resulting from data leaks.

e. Collaboration with Third-Party Consultants

The ability to mask data consistently across applications also facilitated collaboration with third-party consultants. The pharmaceutical company could confidently engage external experts, knowing that the sensitive data shared with them would be appropriately protected. This fostered a productive and secure working environment.

By leveraging IBM Optim, organizations can comply with data privacy regulations and confidently collaborate with third-party consultants while maintaining the security of sensitive data.

In today’s interconnected business landscape, consistent data masking across applications is crucial for maintaining data privacy and enabling meaningful testing. IBM Optim provides a powerful solution to address the challenges organizations face in protecting sensitive information while ensuring comprehensive testing. Through a real-world case study, we saw how a pharmaceutical company successfully implemented IBM Optim to mask employee data consistently across PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite. By leveraging IBM Optim’s capabilities, the company achieved enhanced data privacy, compliance with regulations, seamless testing processes, cost savings, and secure collaboration with third-party consultants. Embracing robust data masking solutions is vital for organizations aiming to navigate the complexities of data privacy in a highly networked environment.

Cyber resilience: the gateway to new-age data security

by | Nov 4, 2022 | Data Privacy, GDPR, Governance Risk and Compliance, Managed Services

Experts argue and rightly so that cyber resilience is more than a mere buzzword today. It has been and will always be relevant. As any business grows and modernizes, it demands higher and more efficient governance. A cyber resilience framework pertains to end-to-end governance to keep the security of the business intact. In fact, cybersecurity and resilience solutions are among the most sought-after managed cyber services of all times. Compromised data security has always been heavily taxing.

According to recent research, cybercrime damage is expected to reach $8 trillion USD by 2023. Is your organization part of this pool or does it stand aside?

Technology comes with its own pluses and minuses. It brings with it tons of opportunities to grow but also carries some challenges that cannot be overlooked. As enterprises embrace modern ways of conducting business and move closer to digitization, vulnerabilities associated with data and technology increase. The rising number of data breaches and cybersecurity incidents is a warning for businesses around the world to rethink their risk management strategies.

Today, companies need more than just an information security plan or governance policy to fight hacks and cyber-attacks. They need end-to-end managed cyber services to prevent security incidents, including a bulletproof action plan to counter them when needed. And, that’s where cyber resilience solutions come into the picture.

What is cyber resilience?

Simply put, cyber resilience is the ability of organizations to withstand cybercrime, prepare for possible threats, and build an action plan to recover from it if it ever hits them. It is a comprehensive framework that aims to protect the entire organization, including its people, processes, and information from cyber crises. The holistic integration of managed cyber services can help you plan this strategically.

How is cyber resilience different from cybersecurity solutions?

Broadly speaking, cyber resilience and cyber security sound synonymous. The two terms are closely related, but cannot be used interchangeably. While cybersecurity mainly focuses on protecting business information, cyber resilience solutions are about protecting the business from attacks that can potentially disrupt the entire operation. Cyber resilience is a more integrated and proactive approach that includes cybersecurity as a key element.

Read the case study: Khan Bank mitigates business risk and attains unified governance with Estuate’s GRC framework.
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How is cyber resilience different from cybersecurity solutions?

Broadly speaking, cyber resilience and cyber security sound synonymous. The two terms are closely related, but cannot be used interchangeably. While cybersecurity mainly focuses on protecting business information, cyber resilience solutions are about protecting the business from attacks that can potentially disrupt the entire operation. Cyber resilience is a more integrated and proactive approach that includes cybersecurity as a key element.

But, why should you care?

Almost all data-driven organizations have a governance policy or risk management framework in place. You would too. But given the big data breaches at companies like Facebook and Equifax, do you feel good about your security measures?

As your data and business scale, cyber threats increase accordingly. Your business is vulnerable to threats like sensitive data theft, insider breaches, poorly managed processes, and technology-driven attacks. In this high-risk digital landscape, attacks can happen anytime, anywhere. A cyber resilience framework can protect you from security incidents over the long term without disrupting business operations. A skilled cyber managed service provider can help.

Watch: Actionable Data Governance: How to manage my sensitive data risk?

How to achieve cyber resilience in your organization?

  1. Identify the weak spots
  2. Protect the critical IT assets
  3. Detect the early signs of malpractice
  4. Respond with immediate effect
  5. Recover as holistically as possible

Step 1: Identify the weak spots

For a scalable cyber resilience strategy framework, you must first take a closer look at your organization’s vulnerabilities. Where is all your sensitive information stored? Who are the people working with sensitive business information? What equipment is used to perform sensitive processes? Conduct a thorough hygiene check of your business and identify the areas where cyber resilience solutions are urgently needed.The first step to avoiding a data breach in your enterprise is thorough internal awareness.

Read the case study: Estuate helps Al Hilal Bank implement enterprise-wide GRC strategy for long-term success.
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Step 2: Protect the critical IT assets

Once you have identified your most critical assets and processes, you need to develop a strategy to protect them from cybercrime. This includes changing security policies, strengthening device encryption, limiting unauthorized use of external devices, educating employees on the importance of cybersecurity solutions, and implementing best practices to prevent malicious activity.

The increasing influx of new technologies makes this step even more important. Take blockchain, for instance. The advent of blockchain has revolutionized the cybersecurity solutions space.

Step 3: Detect the early signs of malpractice

In addition to proactively preventing cybercrime, you must also closely monitor your business processes, employee activities, and sensitive information. Early detection of fraud or malware can minimize the drastic impact on business operations. Any troubling activity must be reported immediately and appropriate action must be taken.

Read: the five steps to enterprise GRC implementation

The 5 steps to a cyber-resilient enterprise
Strict and timely adherence to these steps can help your business with cyber resilience

Step 4: Respond with immediate effect

Cybercriminals are never at rest, and despite the security measures taken, your company can experience a security incident. It could be something as minor as an employee using a personal device for an official task, or as major as the loss of sensitive customer data. As soon as suspicious activity of any kind is uncovered, it must be dealt with immediately and forwarded to the right people in the company to combat it effectively.

Step 5: Recover as holistically as possible

What’s done is done, but you can always mitigate the adversity of cybercrime with the right measures. This step is about the measures that can be taken to ward off malicious activities, prevent them from spreading to different departments, and fix the bug under your control.

The aftermath of a security incident can be devastating. Not only does it hinder business activities, but the company suffers huge financial losses and its brand value is severely impacted. A bulletproof cybercrime prevention strategy is a must for all businesses, regardless of size or type. Cyber resilience is a smart choice to protect your business data, processes, technologies, and employees from cybercrime in the long run.

As most data-driven enterprises today center on software applications, a data protection strategy can prove to be handy. When holistic and properly deployed, such a strategy can form the bedrock for your application testing.

Watch the webinar: Securing and protecting enterprise data.

Unlock robust cyber resilience solutions with Estuate’s GRC framework

We integrate all three pillars of GRC under one umbrella to help you enhance business efficiencies.

  • Corporate Governance
    • Policy creation and management
    • Development of a legal and regulatory framework
    • Information and asset management
    • Enterprise-wide information security awareness
  • Risk Management
    • Business and IT risk assessment
    • Risk monitoring and analysis
    • Third-party risk management
    • Issue management and troubleshooting
  • Regulatory Compliance
    • Regulatory intelligence
    • Compliance design
    • Compliance audits and surveys
    • Reporting and metrics

Want to explore further? Dive in here to learn more about our overall GRC ambit

Our GRC solution span covers a wide gamut of specializations: from Cisco, Imperva, Auryc, and more.

So if you are looking for any assistance in the realm of managed cyber services, we’ll be more than happy to help!

How important do you think cyber resilience is for today’s businesses to survive and thrive? What steps are you taking to protect your company’s data? Let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We would love to hear from you!

Get FREE access to our datasheet: Estuate’s Governance, Risk & Compliance Practice.

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Data Archiving: The differentiator of ERP services

by | Aug 3, 2022 | Data Privacy, GDPR, IBM, Test Data Management

Effective and efficient are the cornerstones of modern ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions. Today’s ERP vendors must address the compounding pressure of ever-expanding data. In other words, they need to cue in robust data archiving solutions. But, archiving ERP applications can get tricky at times. Many companies seek to retire those initial ERP applications – and, in some cases, the mainframe apps and proprietary platforms that preceded them – they’re not sure how to transition gracefully while maintaining access to all their data. This data still has value, not to mention liability potential, so archiving it takes careful thought. A skillful ERP solutions vendor can come to the rescue.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global ERP software market will reach USD 93.34 billion in 2028 growing at a CAGR of 9.2% during the 2021-2028 period.

This implies booming ERP data growth in the upcoming years. The time is as important as ever to archive old data to make room for fresher incoming data. Efficient functioning can foster smoother ROI generation here.

What is data archiving?

Data archiving refers to a process of identifying, extracting, and transferring data that is no longer in active use, to a secure and accessible location. In the initial phases of building an ERP application, the focus is more on making accessible as much data as possible – in one system, under one roof. But, on the flip side of this lies the complex parent-child relationships between data tables. It can get difficult to pull data out of relational databases without breaking something. Your ERP solutions vendor needs to have tools in place for efficient data archival.

Why do you need data archiving solutions?

  1.  Improves cost efficiency
  2. Enhances business productivity
  3.  Supports audits and compliance
  4.  Streamlines enterprise storage

1. Improves cost efficiency

In today’s data-overload environment, storage needs are at an all-time high. Without proper infrastructure, this can put unwarranted pressure on your servers, especially if you are storing everything on site. And, this further involves colossal investments for server upkeep. Many enterprise compliance standards demand that all corporate data (including ERP data) be stored for a substantial periods of time. So, when data deletion is not an option, it is always prudent to store data on remote/off-premise servers or in the cloud. And, this is what data archiving services are all about. In the absence of a well-maintained data repository, companies often have to outsource for intel discovery and incur huge costs in the process.

Data archiving services also take the load off your IT teams and make you more self-reliant when it comes to accessing the archived data. The archives are designed to be both affordable and accessible.

2. Enhances business productivity

Data archival solutions streamline ERP data end to end. It is record management of sorts. Business operation applications, such as ERP, often gather a lot of data in a very short period of time. It creates a lot of unnecessary pressure on your on-premise storage facilities. Cloud storage solutions are better suited for such requirements. All the data your software tools accumulate over a stipulated period of time can instead be archived for easy access and analysis. This not only saves on-premise service space but also ensures that all of your installations function quickly and efficiently.

By carefully structuring the collected data, the process of data archival also makes the case for easy data retrieval. All redundant data is removed and only the unique data is stored and saved. This further enhances business communication as all stakeholders access and collaborate on the same versions of the data files.

The benefits of leveraging data archiving services
Data archival brings multiple advantages to businesses

3. Supports audits and compliance

Data governance and compliance are integral components of smooth enterprise operations. Businesses need to go through constant third-party audits and legal reviews. There is always some data that is not in active usage but still, you need to keep it handy for the said requirements. And, ERP data is also no exception. A sound ERP solution vendor has mechanisms in place to immediately identify and automatically archive such data. Application data masking and retirement are other data management solutions that can pave your way to strong compliance standards.

Watch: Archiving structured data for information lifecycle governance and profit

4. Streamlines enterprise storage

It’s always easier to gain insights from data when it’s stored in a single, shared location. If it is scattered across multiple devices and networks, it becomes difficult to leverage data as enterprise intel. To add to the challenge, data often comes in various shapes and sizes from varying sources – structured and unstructured, traditional and non-traditional. This, of course, means recurring efforts in server maintenance. A centralized repository of data (ERP or otherwise) with business-critical user access can make enterprise operations more efficient.

With data archiving solutions in place, storage can be streamlined and maintained in one go. You can plug in with select ERP service integrations for desirable outputs.

Watch: how to manage explosive data growth effectively

Why do many ERP vendors often miss out on data archiving?

If you’ve ever struggled with the process of purging, archiving, or extracting data for a mid-sized or large enterprise, you may have wondered aloud, “Why didn’t my ERP solutions vendor provide a better way to do this?”

In 1986, Oracle started developing a new generation of business applications that would transform the playing field. Up until that point, ERP systems had been proprietary. They were either written for IBM mainframes (as SAP’s accounting software suite was), or for one of the various mini-computer platforms.

Oracle’s new software would propel ERP one step closer to truly open systems. How? It was written for a new generation of hardware platforms—such as Sequent Computers and Pyramid Computers—that ran on a generic version of the UNIX operating system. Adding to the flexibility, the Oracle relational database could also run on proprietary platforms. Thus, companies using the new Oracle Financials suite with an Oracle database could run their software on virtually anything.

Suddenly, enterprises truly had a choice of hardware and software. Although IBM had invented the relational database, Oracle was running with it.

However, that wasn’t the only pro-customer change. The user interface in these new applications was vastly improved. Previous generations of ERP had offered users a traditional mainframe green screen. You would fill the screen with data and press a button. Since there was no field-level validation, errors would only come back to you after you’d processed an entire screen.

Oracle’s new apps, on the other hand, offered much richer interaction between computer and user. And because they ran on a relational database, users could query data on demand, rather than using the cumbersome nightly reporting associated with mainframe computing. These innovations naturally enabled much greater productivity—not to mention, user satisfaction.

The dynamics between data management and data archiving in ERP

The uptake of ERP applications has been dramatic over time. And the urge to load these systems with huge amounts of corporate data has been unstoppable. So, it was only a matter of time for businesses to realize that the aging ERP applications come with a more serious problem: it’s really hard to get data out of them. And fairly, this set the stage for corporate data repositories, ergo, data archives to enter the picture.

Bring home data archiving solutions with IBM InfoSphere Optim

Estuate is the most trusted data archival partner of IBM InfoSphere Optim

At Estuate, we have deep experience in the implementation of IBM InfoSphere Optim solutions, and other IBM Unified Governance and Integration products. Together, we have more than 350 successful implementations.

Related read: Application archiving and retirement solutions with IBM InfoSphere Optim

With IBM InfoSphere Optim Archive solution, you can seamlessly archive little-used data and retire obsolete applications. The archived data can be accessed at any time.

Watch: An Estuate case study – IBM InfoSphere Optim Data Growth Solution for PeopleSoft
So if you need any help in archiving your ERP data, know that we’re just this click away.

What are you doing to make your subscription business model stand out? Do you think a subscription platform enabler can help? Let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We would love to hear from you!

Data protection strategy as the bedrock for application testing

by | Jul 4, 2022 | Data Privacy, IBM, Test Data Management

Secure applications are at the core of a good data protection strategy. Businesses run rigorous web application security assessments to prevent even the smallest of data leaks. Today, data is the most precious resource needed to garner a sustainable ROI. Naturally, software security testing is integral to modern data protection and risk management.

What is a data protection strategy?

A data protection strategy refers to a collection of steps and procedures to maintain the integrity of enterprise data. It is a holistic framework that defines how business-critical data should be maintained and with whom should it be shared. Most data today pass through some form of software application or the other. So, web application security assessment has become an integral part of most data protection strategies. Applications are subjected to stringent software security testing to ensure risks of zero data breaches.

Data privacy risk has always been a growing concern at the global corporate level. According to the findings of an extensive pen testing project, hackers can successfully crack into an organization’s internal data perimeter in 93% of cases. Many can’t prevent their super users from accessing sensitive information on production databases. Most are unable to even detect these incidents. Over time, there has been a marked rise in threats from social engineering and advanced ransomware as well. So, it is mandatory for applications to be robust and secure. But to ensure the same, organizations must have software security testing in place. A good Test Data Management strategy is super-critical in such cases.

Read: GDPR as the driving force behind Indian data privacy laws.

The number of online transactions is increasing exponentially. In today’s post-pandemic world, everyone’s financial data is everywhere. Misconfigurations, poor maintenance, and unknown data assets at data-handling companies often pave the way for impending disasters.

Why do you need a data protection strategy?

The benefits of having a data protection strategy are manifold.

  1.  Protects the holistic integrity of enterprise data
  2.  Saves against financial loss and public relations hassles
  3.  Safeguards customer privacy; strengthens trust
  4.  Helps to maintain compliance with third-party regulations
  5.  Facilitates easier management of data and information

Data privacy has been one of the most pressing concerns since the last few decades. And, given the rapid growth of data, some of the breaches are proving to be devastatingly massive. For example, back in September 2018, Hotel Marriott International (Starwood) reported a sensitive data breach for half a million of its customer base. The ensuing investigation exposed unauthorized hotel network access for four-long years preceding the attack. It goes without saying that the PR aftershocks were massive. On top of this, the company was fined £18.4 million by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office in 2020 for failing to keep customers’ personal data safe.

Read: significance of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for US companies
Why do you need to adopt a ‘Data Protection Strategy’?
The benefits of having a data protection strategy in place

More recent examples of data breaches pertain to the Facebook data loss of 2021 and the data breach from Srilankan payment gateway PayHere that exposed over 65GB of customer payment records.

According to Verizon, 82% of breaches result from human discrepancies and social attacks. 62% of all attacks compromise client-sensitive information and affect partner relationships.

However, given the massive span of data applications, implementing a data protection strategy at the get-go can sound overwhelming. The critical first step is to know which grounds to cover with immediate effect.
Read: handy tips to grow cyber resilience at your enterprise

Should you include application testing in your data risk management plan?

Absolutely yes! A low-hanging fruit is to focus on the treatment of production database(s) while testing software applications. It’s not uncommon for large companies to maintain ten copies of production – full clones used for testing, training, and development purposes.

To make matters worse, the people who have access to these copies of production are often “outsiders” – third-party consultants who you may not have vetted as carefully as your actual employees. Giving them full access to sensitive corporate data creates a significant privacy risk.

Where to begin privatizing data? Many organizations struggle just to figure out where all their at-risk data lives in the corporate environment. The next step is to put in place a simple yet reliable mechanism for masking, or scrambling, that data so that it will still be useful for testing but won’t endanger the privacy of your customers and employees. In the face of a colossal threat to user data privacy, software testing security is a must-have function.

Read: the importance of masking data in the wake of big data management

IBM InfoSphere Optim hosts excellent data privacy solutions

IBM InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy is a solution that minimizes risk without slowing down your testing. By masking personal information, IBM Optim protects confidential customer and employee data and ensures compliance with all levels of privacy regulations.

Of course, masking your data is only part of the game. It’s also a best practice to subset your production database, rather than use full copies of production, for testing and other non-production activities. IBM Optim Test Data Management facilitates that process. And when you use Optim Data Privacy and Optim Test Data Management in tandem, you can actually apply data privacy rules to production data while you’re subsetting it.

Watch: IBM’s ingenuity in the data privacy space

Implement IBM InfoSphere Optim solutions with a reliable data protection partner

The hallmark of a true partnership lies in its years of support and excellence. For us (Estuate) and IBM, the journey has been true to this essence.

We are IBM’s go-to partner for IBM InfoSphere Optim solutions across many platforms and use cases. Together, we have built a successful track record with 350+ InfoSphere Optim implementations.

Below is a snapshot of the Estuate-IBM synergy:

  • IBM InfoSphere Optim Archive Solution – By archiving little-used data and retiring obsolete applications, you expedite cost-efficiency. What’s more? The archived data can be accessed at any time.
  • IBM InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy Solution – This safeguards all your sensitive data located across non-production environments.
  • IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management Solution – Agile test environments having the right-sized subsets are the basis of robust software applications. It’s a bonus when you get to secure your sensitive test data too in the process.
Watch:An Estuate case study – IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management with data masking for Siebel
So if you need any help in road-mapping your data protection and risk management strategy, know that we’re just this click away.

What is your take on data protection and risk management? Is web application security assessment really necessary or it just tends to slow down the speed of deployment? Let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We would love to hear from you!

Data Masking in the Wake of Big Data Management

by | Sep 20, 2021 | Data Privacy, Test Data Management

Data Masking in the Wake of Big Data Management

Modern businesses feed on data for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Today, so significant is good clean data for business growth that even the minutest of data compromise is capable of wreaking havoc on brand positions. Daily headlines on data leaks and thefts bear testimony to this. Goes without saying, this has ushered privacy tactics like data masking straight into today’s council of big data management solutions. If you have only been opting for data archiving solutions to uphold data integrity till date, right now would be the right time to go ahead and opt for data privacy as a service as well.

Remember Quora’s 2018 mega data breach or the more recent MyRepublic data leak? The shock waves these events triggered were massive at both the business and customer levels.

Opting for data privacy as a service and masking data can save your business from such undesirable scenarios.

What is Data Masking?

Data masking is a smart way of creating ‘realistic fake’ data. This fictionalized data is similar to its real counterpart albeit encrypted, shuffled, substituted, or tweaked in some other way. The ingenuity of this big data management solution is that it ably caters to all your functional needs (training, testing, auditing, etc.) while simultaneously protecting the sensitive information from unintended users. As and when needed, the data can always be engineered back to its original state.

For instance, when testing a net banking application for quality, testers need to log in as a user and process transactions – putting confidential customer information at the risk of exposure/misuse. However if the data is masked in the non-production testing environment, the risk can be easily averted.

Textbook examples of business data that require masking are corporate intelligence assets and personally identifying information (PII) like full names, email addresses, and national identifiers of personnel, customers, or business partners.

Such careful data governance along with other data management hacks like data archiving can make a world of difference for your business.

Non-Production Data Masking: Part of Big Data Management Solution
Non-Production Data Masking: Part of Big Data Management Solution

Understanding Data Masking Needs – Why Should You Put a Mask on Data?

Data is a multi-dimensional and multi-utility business resource. It is present everywhere from your CRM software to the third-party interfaces you are affiliated with, making it one of the most vulnerable company assets. Toward this, robust big data management solutions recognize masking and data archiving as quintessential for protecting overall data integrity.

You can unlock the following capabilities at the functional level with data masking solutions in place:

Shield sensitive data (structured/unstructured)

All thanks to the big data boom, research suggests that by 2025, the global data bank will exceed a staggering volume of 180 zettabytes! For businesses, this means a rapidly expanding inventory of information stored across structured databases and unstructured image files, documents, forms, etc. You must have the flexibility of protecting your sensitive data irrespective of its nature and also divulging it to desired shareholders as needed.

De-identify data in non-production environments

Non-production databases (development, testing, training) are highly vulnerable in nature. Methods that protect production environment live data (multi-factor authentication schemes, biometrics, etc.) cannot simply be applied here as the privacy pre-requisites of non-production data are often unique.

Data masking is necessary to be adopted under such scenarios.

Monitor real-time access to data

Certain databases are so confidential that they require 24*7 monitoring to control who is accessing them. Data privacy as a service can help here by masking data or terminating connections by analyzing access patterns.

At the organizational level, data privacy as a service is equally empowering. It helps you to:

Arrest the risk of data breach

This is perhaps the most crucial advantage of having a data masking solution in place. By shielding confidential information, you can keep the risks of data loss, insider threats, and privacy violations at bay. A sound data masking solution de-identifies the data in such a robust way that even if the data is lost or stolen, the perpetrator will not be able to derive any benefit from it.

Here are some other proven ways of avoiding data breach at your enterprise.

Strengthen the customer’s trust in you

Skyrocketing cases of data leak and identity theft have been emphasizing the need for data privacy as a service. Data breach does not only affect your brand equity and revenue, but it also upsets your entire business growth by disturbing the value you provide to your customers. A study of retail banking customers found that the latter prefer engaging only with brands that can safeguard their privacy.

Improve data compliance and governance

It is not enough to only secure data internally, businesses also need to protect sensitive data that may be exposed during third-party audits. With data masking solutions in place, it would always be easy to level up on these fronts. Pre-defined actionable data privacy classifications and rules help to increase compliance preparedness.

Benefits of Masking Data for Increasing Data Privacy
Benefits of Masking Data for Increasing Data Privacy

Welcome to the World of IBM – InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy as a Service

One thing that often bemuses most businesses is the universality of data. They are often not fully aware of all the pockets where confidential data resides or how exactly to protect the same. Identifying this need, IBM had added the InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy Solution in its ambit. It pertains to an end-to-end data privacy and governance solution across on-premise or cloud applications, reports, and databases – irrespective of the level of complexity of the associated IT environment. Like its test data management and data archiving solutions, data privacy as a service is another stellar offering from the IBM family.

Shared below is a quick summary of the capabilities it offers.

A Good Data Masking Solution? Here’s What to Expect –

  • Composite data masking techniques – e.g., substrings, arithmetic expressions, random or sequential number generation, date aging, concatenation
  • Coherence with the application for which it is masking data – it must adhere to permissible structures, values, and patterns; masked data must make functional sense to the recipients
  • Pre-defined capabilities for masking standard customer data like national identifiers, email addresses, etc.
  • Data coherence and integrity – the masking procedure must be scalable across all related databases and applications to avoid erroneous test results
  • Flexibility – there should be provisions to mask the data before loading into non-production environments

Estuate has best-in-class expertise in IBM Data Privacy Implementation Solutions

In the wake of big data management, we understand the importance of maintaining data sanctity. With our expert IBM Optim data privacy capabilities, safeguard your sensitive data in non-production environments.

  • We are IBM’s go-to partner for IBM Optim solutions across many platforms and use cases.
  • We have a successful track record with over 350 Optim implementations.
  • We have in-house domain experts to provide business-specific consultation across various industry verticals.

Watch this webinar conducted by Estuate’s IBM specialists on data privacy concerns in the gaming industry.

If you are looking for robust data privacy as a service, we would be more than happy to help. We’re just this click away.

What are your thoughts on data privacy as a service? Do you think that masking data can help your business?

How to Identify and Manage Software Testing Risks

by | Nov 19, 2019 | Data Privacy, Test Data Management

Enormous data growth rates are remarkably high and undeniable. A tsunami of digital information is igniting the engine of today’s corporate industry, and many businesses are striving to ride the data wave to success.

Yet many businesses are not adequately attentive to all the potential liabilities sneaking in the depths of this data, including the risks associated in using personally identifiable customer or employee information (PII) for application development and testing purposes. There’s real potential for serious legal and noncompliance, data security and data leakage risks when companies fail to guard this data.

According to 2019 MidYear QuickView Data Breach Report the first six months of 2019 have witnessed more than 3,800 publicly revealed breaches exposing an unbelievable 4.1 billion compromised records. The striking fact is that around 3.2 billion of those records were exposed by just eight data breaches.

It goes without saying that the PR aftershocks from such an incident can be devastating to even a well-regarded company. But let’s be cynical for a moment and look only at the cold, hard financial impact. As per a report, the average cost to the breached company could be $202 per compromised record and $6.6 million per data incident.

In addition, the FDIC may levy fines from $5,000 to $1,000,000 per day, and GLB sections 501 and 503 enable criminal penalties.

Of course, we don’t need to talk you out of having a data security incident. Nobody chooses to have one. But when it comes to prevention, we believe many companies are still dropping the ball.

Data Privacy Risk: It’s a Growing Concern

How to stop the bleeding? It seems like a tall order. According to an independent Oracle user group, 62% of organizations can’t prevent their super users from reading or tampering with sensitive information. Most are unable even to detect these incidents. And only one out of four organizations believes its data assets are securely configured.

On top of that, we’re still in the growth curve for worldwide internet usage. The number of online transactions is increasing exponentially. Personal financial data is flying around in all directions. As more people gain access to the Internet, the number of criminals online will increase accordingly.

Don’t let your company be their next victim.

Partly due to the financial and PR issues described above, partly due to consumer privacy concerns, and partly due to an increasingly stringent regulatory environment, safeguarding data privacy has become a top priority in virtually every industry.

Companies that are serious about preventing incidents should focus on securing any and all copies of their production database. As we’ve discussed on this blog, it’s not uncommon for large companies to maintain 10 copies of production – full clones used for testing, training, and development purposes.

To make matters worse, the people who have access to these copies of production are often “outsiders” – third-party consultants who you may not have vetted as carefully as your actual employees. Giving them full access to sensitive corporate data creates a significant privacy risk.

Masking Data to Minimize Risk

Where to begin privatizing data? Many organizations struggle just to figure out where all their at-risk data lives in the corporate environment. The next step is to put in place a simple yet reliable mechanism for masking, or scrambling that data so that it will still be useful for testing but won’t endanger the privacy of your customers and employees.

IBM InfoSphere Optim Data Privacy is a solution that minimizes risk without slowing down your testing. By masking personal information, IBM Optim protects confidential customer and employee data and ensures compliance with all levels of privacy regulations.

Of course, masking your data is only part of the game. It’s also a best practice to subset your production database, rather than use full copies of production, for testing and other non-production activities. IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management facilitates that process. And when you use Optim Data Privacy and Optim Test Data Management in tandem, you can actually apply data privacy rules to production data while you’re subsetting it.

It’s a pretty good one-two punch – much more desirable than the one-two punch of a costly data breach and the ensuing PR nightmare.