Obfuscation & Anonymization

You can use the Obfuscation & Anonymization feature to avoid exposing sensitive data to unauthorised users.

Before you begin

  • To configure obfuscation and anonymization of the extracted data and screen captures, you must have the necessary permissions assigned to you by the administrator. You do not have to be an administrator to customize obfuscation and anonymization. For more information, see Default user profile permissions

  • The first time you create and configure a IBM Task Mining project, you must set the Enable Obfuscation & Anonymization toggle to Yes.

  • It is important that you cannot move to the next steps (Task Classification and Contextual data classification) before completing the Obfuscation & Anonymization phase. Do not confirm that you want to move to further steps until you finish the Obfuscation & Anonymization phase, or other users will be able to view your unobfuscated data.

Obfuscation and anonymization: differences

Data obfuscation is the process of hiding certain information from the extracted data and screen captures. When you obfuscate your data, the value is erased. The field is not used by IBM Task Mining, because it is seen as empty.

Data anonymization is the process of encrypting certain information from the extracted data and screen captures. When you anonymize your data, the value is transformed, but it can still be extracted and used by IBM Task Mining to create a project.

In the following example, the user wants to anonymize the value Installation and configuration and obfuscate the value Troubleshooting:

values selected for obfuscation and anonymization

The following image presents how the user changes the visibility status of the values. Then they click Save and refresh the page. setting the values to obfuscated and anonymized

The following image presents how the values were affected: obfuscated and anonimized values

Both values are also no longer visible on the screen capture.

Functionalities of the Obfuscation & Anonymization page

In the Obfuscation and Anonymization tab, you can see the list of applications and web pages recorded by the TM Agent. To see the detail of each application recording, click the Show page properties icon next to the required application. When you click the icon, the Contextual data section opens and provides a detailed list of all items in the recording. Items are sorted in the list based on the frequency and cardinality of the recorded data. To view the details of the recorded data and screen captures of an application or webpage, see the Details section.

Or other filters to find the information you are looking for quicker. For more information, see Filtering the fields.

Obfuscating or anonymizing values

In the visibility column, you can choose whether to obfuscate or anonymize any value in the contextual data.

Visibility menu

To obfuscate or anonymize a value, complete the following steps:

  1. Click Show page properties icon to view the contextual data of the selected page.
  2. Select Anonymized or Obfuscated from the Visibility drop-down list to anonymize or obfuscate the value.
  3. Save your changes.

You can view the changes applied to the screen captures in the Details section.

Select page details

Applying a timeframe

You can update the timeframe to show the recorded data of interest in a targeted manner. Applying timeframe helps you to analyse a limited amount of data. The timeframe displays a notification when the number of recorded events reaches the limit of 1000.

Timeframe button

To edit the timeframe:

  1. Click Data analysis info icon.
  2. In the Edit analysis timeframe section, toggle Custom timeframe to on.
  3. Specify the desired Start Date and End Date.
  4. Apply your changes.

You can also set the timeframe from the Task Classification and Contextual Data Classification pages.

Filtering the values

To find what you are looking for quicker, you can use filters to limit the data shown in the Obfuscation & Anonymization list.

Filtering by visibility

Click the visibility filter visibility filter icon to filter the visible, obfuscated, or anonymized values.

Searching pages by values

To search for a page by providing a contextual value, complete the following steps:

  1. Click the Search pages by value add icon.
  2. Choose any of the following search parameters from the dropdown list:
    • Select Value to filter the pages which contain the same contextual value.
    • Select Contains value to filter the pages which contain a substring value.
    • Select Credit card to view the pages that contain data related to a credit card number.
  3. Specify the value.
  4. Click the Apply filters button.

You can now find all the pages with the specified value in the list.

To delete any entry in the Search pages by value fields, click Delete search field icon.

Filtering by applications

To filter the recorded data by specifying the application name, complete the following steps:

  1. Select an application from the Filter by application drop-down list.
  2. Click the Apply filters button.

Filtering by pages

To filter the recorded data by specifying the web page, complete the following steps:

  1. Select a page from the Filter by page drop-down list.
  2. Click the Apply filters button.

Next step

When you finish the Obfuscation & Anonymization phase, confirm that you have completed the privacy settings in order to proceed to the next steps.