Advanced masking methods in the IBM Optim Data Privacy API

The IBM® Optim Data Privacy advanced masking API supports several different masking methods.

The main differences between the masking methods are how much of the original characteristics of the data remain. The more original characteristics of the data that are retained, the more useful, but the less secure, the masked data becomes.

As you choose a masking method, consider these factors:

Reversibility: Whether the masking method can be reversed to return the data to the original values.
Input validation: Whether to validate the data input to ensure it meets expected requirements.
Repeatability: Whether to repeat the same masked value for a repeated original value to maintain referential integrity between tables.
Format preserving: Whether to retain the format of the original data. Preserving the format means that letters are replaced by letters with the same case, digits are replaced by digits, and the number of characters is the same. Use format-preserving methods when the output must maintain the original format constraints.

Table 1. IBM Optim Data Privacy advanced masking methods
Method	Reversibility	Input validation	Repeatability	Format preserving
Redaction	No	No	No	No
Tokenization	No	No	Yes	No
Encryption	Yes	No	Yes	No
Random format fabrication	No	No	No	Yes
Repeatable format fabrication	No	No	Yes	Yes
Format-preserving tokenization	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Format-preserving encryption	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Format-transforming tokenization	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Format-transforming encryption	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes