DigitalRoute, a leading innovator in data integration and management, has announced the integration of a new ‘data masking’ functionality into its core MediationZone technology. With stringent regulatory requirements worldwide making anonymization table stakes for data integration and management software, this is a critical product advance.

Data Masking is a particularly urgent need in Europe where the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was ratified last year and will be enforceable from 25 May 2018. The time is now to ensure your organization is preparing for this EU legislation. Broadly, this legislation guarantees individual customers a series of rights related to their personal data such as the right to be forgotten, the right to portability and the right of consent before data can be used. This drives a requirement for Sensitive Data Pseudonymization that Data Masking directly addresses.

DigitalRoute’s functional advance comes in the form an ‘agent’, a self-contained module within the product that can be inserted as appropriate into configurable workflows whose other agents account for functions such as collection, forwarding and data processing.

The new Data Masking agent is designed for use in scenarios where data will processed in the Cloud but needs to be anonymized so the source cannot be identified.  This will help companies comply with regulation in the area of data protection, letting them make sure personal data can only be accessed in a controlled manner.

The technology works by selecting fields of data that need to be protected for mapping in a configurable Masking Profile. This means the relevant data can be:

• Anonymized – one way, non reversible.
• Pseudonymized – where original values are stored or encrypted and data can subsequently be de-masked (reversible).

Masking also makes it possible to create synthetic data. When pseudonymizing data, different storage options are available to fit user requirements in terms of cost, performance, volume and scalability.

In addition to its role in regulatory compliance, DigitalRoute data masking technology confers benefits to users including:

• An easy way to mask data by drag-and-drop of an agent to a workflow.
• Easy to adapt to any type of masking situations, making it possible to solve any requirement.
• Different storage options available to support the customer’s requirements.
• Does not require any coding. The agent itself does all the mapping for the user.

While performance numbers are highly dependent on the specific use case, in testing a single real-time workflow with 3 fields masked / de-masked per record, on Intel I7 2.1Ghz CPU, 16GB Ram, SSD Disk the agent processed 15-30,000 records per second based on total volume of 1 million records.

Said Johan Bergh, CEO, DigitalRoute: “Data Anonymization has been a growing issue and a challenge with where companies have to comply with regulatory requirements. DigitalRoute’s new agent will enable them to do this, quickly, cost-effectively and in a self-sufficient way.”

Source: DigitalRoute media announcement