Data Masking Tool from dataguise to Get DB2/400 Support

Published: November 17, 2009

by Alex Woodie

System i shops concerned about the unauthorized distribution of sensitive data may want to consider dgmasker 3.0 and dgdiscover 3.0, which were released last month by dataguise. The software enables organizations to locate sensitive data wherever it might reside across multiple production and development systems, and then programmatically "mask" it so that it's illegible to humans. The vendor is very close to supporting IBM's DB2 database on System i servers and mainframes with the new version of dgmasker.

Organizations are required by law to keep strict control over their data thanks to a host of new government and industry regulations, such as HIPAA, PCI, and, soon, the HITECH Act. According to dataguise, many of these organizations have taken steps to address the information disclosure problem within their production systems, but not systems that support development, testing, QA, and pre-production deployment.

The Fremont, California, company addressed the shortage of solutions for non-production systems with the recent releases of dgmasker 3.0 and dgdiscover 3.0 at the Oracle Open World conference in San Francisco.

The two products work together to identify sensitive information and then conceal it from prying eyes. The dgdiscover component searches multiple databases for data that may be sensitive, such as nine-digit Social Security numbers or 16-digit credit card numbers. Once the sensitive data is identified, data masking algorithms in dgmasker are used to render all or part of the data unusable.

Data masking routines are nothing new to intrepid DBAs, who have been rolling their own masking scripts to protect sensitive databases for years. This approach works well for simple implementations with limited systems and data types, according to dataguise. But the data masking problem grows exponentially more difficult when the masking solution must traverse multiple systems and databases, and keep the data in usable form across these integration points.

Development boxes and test systems are good examples of a data masking tool's need to maintain file and format interoperability, while minimizing the risk of unauthorized information disclosure. Because production data is routinely copied to development and test systems, organizations may inadvertently expose sensitive data to programmers, testers, and database administrators working on these systems. The new release of dgmasker can protect that sensitive data without causing any problems with testing activities.

The dataguise solutions currently support Oracle , IBM DB2 for LUW, Microsoft SQL Server and Access, MySQL, Teradata, and Sybase databases. Supported unstructured file formats include .txt, .doc, .pdf, .xml, CSV, and LOG files.

Support for DB2/400 and DB2 for z/OS in dgmasker 3.0 was in beta testing at the time of dataguise's announcements last month. Currently, support for these enterprise data stores is expected to be generally available in dgmasker 3.0 by the end of the year, with support for these databases in dgdiscover by the summer of 2010, a spokesman for dataguise says.

For more information, visit www.dataguise.com.

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