Why Is Data Masking Important?

Data masking provides essential tools for organizations to best address the security challenges of managing sensitive data (confidential or private). Data masking prevents data from circulating lightly in non-productive environments and, as so often happens, ends up leaking or is susceptible to misuse or theft.

Its effectiveness is revealed as a necessary solution to be able to work seamlessly with data, export it and, ultimately, protect it against internal and external threats.

If, on the one hand, data masking policies seek to create operational data sets for non-productive environments, and do it by achieving consistent information, on the other hand, their objective is to do it in a safe way, fulfilling both the moral obligation to preserve it As with the data privacy regulations and other current legislation related to the organization, something even more priority for companies since the entry into force of the GDPR.

Not surprisingly, data privacy and security is one of the fundamental pillars that must be met to comply with standards that guarantee security in IT environments and, from a general approach, also to face challenges that, ultimately, , even the survival of the organization depends.

Data Masking Tools: The Key To Security

The importance of data masking tools is related to a double utility, which we will explain in the following lines:

Avoid non-compliance with regulations: data masking solutions help to ensure compliance with regulatory laws on the protection of data of customers, suppliers or, for example, the organization’s own employees.

Its function avoids the company high fines in case of possible inspections. In this section, security is also linked to the moral obligation of any organization to protect private data, in particular, and sensitive data in general.

Avoid the risk of leakage: the data masking blocks exposure of sensitive data production to unauthorized users, reducing the risk of leakage of critical data, moreover, far more frequent than theft or cyber-attacks.

In another order, it should be noted that the cloud is a great opportunity to reduce infrastructure costs but, at the same time, it entails new security risks for data. In this case, too, data masking can be a practical solution that makes this possible, while ensuring that the applicable legal provisions are respected.

In short, it is about applying data security policies that guarantee that the data that resides in the organization is properly protected. In this regard, data masking should be part of the work routine of all organizations that handle sensitive data, a concept that is variable in terms of confidentiality, but that, nevertheless, at the legal level has very well defined guidelines when it comes to of personal information.