In this blog series we have covered what is test data management, why is it still important, and how CyberRes SC-TDM can help organizations create test data from existing production databases securely for end-users to comply  with regulatory requirements. In this blog, we will focus on how our CyberRes Voltage Secure and Complaint Test Data Management (SC-TDM) solution can be extended to use cases such as securing the data while migrating to the cloud, monetizing the data by sharing it with the third party for data analytics, and minimization data organization data by removing or archiving legacy and unwanted data.

Use Case 1: Secure Data Migration to Cloud

As opposed to the short-term gain of moving to the cloud a decade back, organizations are now building a strong strategic cloud transformation approach and architecture to reap the rewards by automating the critical infrastructure and application migrations. Migrating data to the cloud often requires increased examination of security applied to sensitive data. In many cases, on-premises data may be protected by platform, network, storage, and perimeter security. But when we migrate that same data to the cloud, security and compliance requirements need to be confirmed by the organizations. Since data security in the cloud is the responsibility of the organization (application owner), they need to have security controls that match the agility and speed of the cloud. 

CyberRes Voltage’s data protection at the field level using its NIST approved Format-Preserving Encryption (FPE) approach provides an additional layer of security around data that is stored in the encrypted cloud storage: even if an external hacker or cloud administrator extracts the organization’s data it will be encrypted and of no value. 

Using Structured Data Manager (SDM) and SecureData together, organizations can combine the power of SDM for data extraction and migration capability with SecureData’s FPE, so that data can be migrated to the cloud without modifying its database schema or table format. This process helps organizations migrate and run their applications quickly. Once stored in the Cloud, the data can be used as-is or decrypted using other SecureData API integrations available for a range of data warehouse, analytics, and application development environments.

Use Case 2: Monetization & Data Analytics

In this era of digital business, organizations are accelerating their business by making their products and services delivery available through cloud in service-based model. This is achieved by bringing technology, people, and process together, which facilitates bringing business data together and enable them to analyze and extract data like customer patterns, market changes to speed up the delivery of the product and services. Most of the business data consists of sensitive data which may need to be shared with third parties for analytics, service agreements, and co-marketing. 

CyberRes SC-TDM solution can be extended to automate the process of extracting data from operational data stores, protecting sensitive data elements, and exporting them in the form of a structured data file such as comma-separated values (CSV) on which the analysis can be performed.

The above diagram shows how SDM is utilized in our SC-TDM solution:

• “Acme Company” uses a third-party service to email top customers with special offers each month.
• The third-party service receives structured files, loads them into a database, processes queries, and generates emails.
• Each month, Acme needs to drop two CSV files onto an SFTP file transfer location.
• File #1 contains the PII required for the email campaign and the masked value of the Social Security Number which is used by Acme as a unique identifier for each customer.
• File #2 contains the customer transactions from the past month.
• Notice below how SDM can mask the value of SSN while preserving referential integrity. This is crucial for the use case because a random mask or character substitution mask-like “XXX-XX-XXXX” would break the business process.

Structured Data Manager can automate and manage highly complex data flows with optional masking and encryption of data.

Use Case 3: Data Minimization (Archive, Delete, Undo)

As organizations modernize their applications to exploit the current technologies and services offered by cloud, they realize that a significant percentage of these applications and its data are used infrequently. In many cases, these older applications are kept online purely for data access purposes in case of an emergency, such as a lawsuit or an audit of some kind. Placing the data from the retiring application into a structured file is an excellent way to preserve the data in a usable form while getting rid of the obsolete application and database. Once the data is archived in this way, the application can be retired and the resources re-purposed for newer applications. 

Archiving and deletion of data from operational systems have traditionally met three distinct objectives:

• Saving storage cost
• Improving application performance
• Meeting compliance requirements for data retention 

While archived data may be accessed infrequently, it must remain accessible for critical situations,

such as legal hold and eDiscovery as per regulations like GDPR and CCPA. These regulations also guided organizations on data minimization, like, as what kind of data can be archived, deleted, or need to be restored. 

Data minimization is typically achieved through two objectives:

• Delete data that serves no business purpose
• Minimize the amount of data stored in operational systems 

SC-TDM solution can be extended to data archiving, deletion, and “UNDO” capabilities. The below architecture explains how it can be used to minimize the data:

In both cases described above, the “Undo” feature in SDM can quickly revert archiving actions – restoring the archived data to the production database. SDM also can search archived data stores and federate your data search across production and archive sources. 

For more information and use case demonstration please contact our experts to request a demonstration or for more information on improving your secure and compliant test data management environment. 

Be sure and catch the webinars in our Privacy Compliance Webinar Series on our CyberRes Webinar Library. They are:

1. How can organizations address their privacy compliance obligations? (on-demand)
2. Preparing for the Next Wave of Regulations (on-demand)
3. Why privacy compliance delivers a competitive edge (August 16 at 11 ET) With Rob Arago of CyberRes, Greg Anderson, VP, Chief Privacy Officer, The E.W. Scripps Company, and Anne Coulombe, Principal Security Advisor to CISO, CIO Amazon Web Services.

Check out our new  Privacy Hub   to learn how data and identity can power privacy. 

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