Data Masking

• What is Data Masking?

Data masking, sometimes called data obfuscation is the process of hiding original data using modified content.
The main reason why data masking is used is to hide sensitive data (personal data) stored in proprietary databases
However, when masking data one shouldn’t forget that this data has to remain usable for other corporate activities, for example, for testing and (further) application development. Data masking is a very useful tool when a company needs to give access to its database(s) to outsource and third-party IT companies
Another situation where data masking may come in very handy is to mitigate operators’ errors
Companies usually trust their employees to make good and secure decisions, however many breaches are a result of operators’ errors.
Data masking can be done either statically or dynamically. As the name suggests, when masking data statically database administrators need to create a copy of the original data and keep it somewhere safe and replace it with a fake set of data.
When masking data dynamically, data is obfuscated on the go as an unauthorized database user will be trying to retrieve the data not intended for that user. Real-time masking also means that data never leaves the production database and, as a result, is less susceptible to security threats.
https://www.datasunrise.com/blog/professional-info/what-is-data-masking/