What’s the best way to protect your data and the data of your users? If you’re working on a SaaS product, then you probably need to think about this question quite a bit. There are a few reasons why you might want to mask your data. Perhaps you want to protect your user’s data from the public eye, or you want to hide sensitive information about your users. You could also be doing it for security reasons—there are times when your data needs to be “off the grid” for a while. In other words, you need to make sure that you can mask your data at some point in the future. You might be wondering how to do this. Data Masking, or the act of hiding information in a text file, is a practice in which an individual attempts to hide sensitive information from a third party. Most often, this is done to protect personal data from being stolen, lost or damaged by malicious individuals. Data Masking is a common method used to protect a computer user’s identity and personal information. The idea behind data masking is that if the content of a file has been altered, then the user’s real name, email address, and personal information cannot be obtained. In the end, the user is not the victim, but the perpetrator. When it comes to customer data privacy, here are 3 ways you can implement a data masking strategy that won’t break the bank: This trick is useful when you have a limited budget, but still want to create a compelling user experience. You can mask your data behind a pretty interface or design, so that the data doesn’t show up on the first page of a Google search for your product or service. If your company’s data is ever breached, it can be devastating for your company. Not only does it affect your customers, but it also impacts your brand and credibility. One of the easiest and least expensive ways to protect your company’s reputation online is through the use of data masking. If you have an app, mobile site, or website that holds any sensitive information about your company, data masking is a simple way to protect it. A major problem with security is the fact that no single company can protect all its customers’ data at once. The idea of a breach at one company doesn’t always translate into a breach at another. “It’s a real challenge for us to try to secure every data set,” says Gidney. So companies need to use multi-layered security methods and apply them consistently. That way, even if a company loses access to data, it can still safeguard the data, even if that means isolating it in an entirely different place. If your business relies on sensitive data, there’s a good chance that you’ve been affected by a ransomware attack in the past. This type of attack locks up your data, and you’re forced to pay a hefty ransom in order to access it again. It’s not the most pleasant experience, but it’s one you’d better be prepared for. Data loss from ransomware attacks costs businesses billions of dollars every year. The most common ransomware attacks occur when a user downloads an email attachment or opens a document. Once the user has opened the attachment or opened the document, the malware is able to get control over the victim’s computer. The only way to protect against these types of attacks is to ensure that employees never open any attachments or visit links sent via email. The three common ways people mask client data:
A client database (such as a spreadsheet) is the easiest way to hide it.A file-sharing website like Dropbox or Google Drive is an even easier way to mask it.A personal email account (like Gmail) with no company name is the least effective and least secure way to mask data.
In conclusion, for most organizations, data masking is the single biggest challenge they face. To effectively mask data, companies such as Delphix must be able to identify who has access to it, when that access occurred, and what was done with that data. At a minimum, all of this information should be tracked, recorded, and stored securely. With that information, you can then make decisions about how to appropriately secure the data.
