Data masking and data obfuscation for flat files

How do Grid-Tools go about flat file data masking?

Flat files are very commonly moved from application component to application component. Very often the data in these files contains sensitive and personal information, as well as commercially secret data. You can use Datamaker™ to mask specific columns and likewise to link data masking to our integrated data masking solution. So, for example, you may have scrambled the SSN of the target database. However, your input file could now contain non-matching SSN numbers and the load will fail. Using the cross reference table, or hash routine used in the database scramble, as part of the file scramble will allow the input file to be processed successfully.

The steps to build data masking are:

• Register the file definitions
• Identify internal structure and dependencies
• Import a sample file to make sure that the FD and file match
• Define sensitivity or data manipulation functions for specific columns
• Run the data scramble utility

Defining column sensitivity

Choose the menu option Security/Mark Table Sensitivity

Select the FD definition you wish to add functions to. In this case FFPAYMENTS(PAYMENT100).

This screen allows you to associate any Datamaker function with a specific column. Select the sensitive tick box and then add in the function you need. The majority of standard Datamaker editing functions are available, in the above screen we are using the randrange functions which will replace the existing value with a random number between 1000000000 and 9000000000.

If you wish to manipulate a value based on the data contained in the file you must use ∧∧ to signify the current column/field value. In the example above, 1 to 3 random days are being added to the column Payment_Date.

Looking up the data downstream in systems

If you need to refer to data in either up-stream or downstream system use the sqllist or execsql function to link to a source or target connection.

For example:

Run the File Scramble

Click on the 'Show Tables' Button:

The number of rows for each record type will be displayed.

Click on the 'Obfuscate' button, and after the file has been obfuscated a message will display:

In the payment record type the amount has been randomized. The date has been offset by 1 to 3 days, and the payment type has been randomly selected from the down-stream system valid payment type codes.

If you use Windows explorer, you will find a file with a suffix of .scramble  in the same folder as the original file. This contains the masked, obfuscated or scrambled data.

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