New V5.1 release of DOT Anonymizer introduces automated DBMS-agnostic discovery of sensitive data
Annecy, 7-10-2019 – ARCAD Software, international leader in DevOps and Modernization solutions, today announced the new V5.1 release of its data anonymization solution DOT Anonymizer, adding new “sensitive data detection” functionality, independent of the DBMS. This new release also comes with inbuilt anonymization of Salesforce data.
The mass detection of sensitive data firmly positions DOT Anonymizer as a leading solution in the commencement of a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance project.
Philippe Magne, ARCAD CEO, explains: “Many organizations facing data protection regulations such as GDPR are unaware of where their sensitive data is located and the flow of this data through their systems. Preparing for GDPR requires an analysis of your data flows. You must identify the type of data you process, where it is stored, who is accountable, who has access and where it is shared. The very first step in this process is to identify precisely which of your data fields are sensitive. DOT Anonymizer uses a variety of techniques including regular expressions to help you produce an exhaustive list of sensitive data and then applies suitable anonymization rules automatically across all of your DBMS”.
The GDPR highly recommends anonymization as a data protection technique. Data that is irreversibly anonymized is outside the scope of the GDPR and beyond the risk of breach. DOT Anonymizer has the advantage of offering irreversible anonymization while preserving the usability of data for testing or analytics purposes. In addition, the consistency of anonymization is guaranteed between different DBMS types, maintaining data integrity so that applications can operate normally over anonymized datasets.
Another design imperative with DOT Anonymizer has been ease of use. “With DOT Anonymizer we set out to design a solution that was independent of the underlying data model, so as to be compatible with any DBMS – Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MongoDB, NoSQL and others, even xml, csv and flat files”, explained Magne. “This makes DOT Anonymizer extremely flexible and easy to use. Our customers can manage and customize their anonymization rules for all databases in one single place”, added Magne.
DOT Anonymizer supports a variety of anonymization techniques such as masking, substitution, shuffling, redaction, encryption, hash, randomization, and a wide set of international data formats (date, postcode, BIC, IBAN etc.). Users can adopt one of the 97 data detection rules delivered out-of-the-box, or customize according to their specific data formats. The solution comes with studio and API to support a variety of use cases including:
- Mass anonymization of data extracted from production
- Anonymization on the fly (e.g. ETL)
- Anonymization at the UI level in modern 3-tier applications
This latest version of DOT-Anonymizer makes data detection much more accurate than by simple regular expression. By using a predefined data dictionary (e.g. the list of common first or last names, the list of cities in a country, the list of postal codes) it is very easy to reduce false positives of raw pattern-based detection. For example, a 5-digit number would be detected by a regular expression as a ZIP code but would be rejected by the dictionary.
This feature also enables fine filtering of data so that users (customers or employees) can easily detect tables that could contain information about certain sets of people. It is also possible to add data dictionaries specific to a profession and thus process data that is difficult to detect by regular expression such as medical conditions or specific skill classification codes.
The simplicity of DOT Anonymizer makes it a highly cost-effective option when starting a GDPR compliance project. Magne concluded: “We have designed DOT Anonymizer to meet the need in the industry for a simple, high performance yet affordable point solution to help our customers get started on a GDPR compliance project. With DOT Anonymizer our customers are usually autonomous in their use of the solution after a day of training. The solution has proven its scalability in some of the largest institutions in our customer base”.
ARCAD Software
55, rue Adrastée
F-74650 Chavanod/Annecy
Press contact: Olenka Van Schendel, WW Marketing Director – ovanschendel@arcadsoftware.com