As a result of the significant time and manual effort required in masking data, these initiatives often fall short. Common challenges organisations face in data masking include:
? Significant complexity – Data masking products are usually complex, hard to set up and hard for users to manage. Refreshing masked databases or restoring them to a previous state during testing can be difficult.
? Distribution hurdles – Large firms in regulated industries have geographically distributed teams, making widespread distribution of masked datasets too expensive or slow.
? Costs and delays – The data subsets often used in test data management are slow to create, and as copies proliferate, they also consume significant and expensive storage.
In its July 25th Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2013 report, Gartner Research stated that “the cost of building and maintaining test data is high, and it is rising because of the increasing need to have data that matches production data for audit validation and provides the necessary security and privacy.” Gartner continues, “Organisations must ensure that accurate data and metadata are available during development, testing and training, while protecting privacy and sensitive data.”
Delphix and Axis believe that their two combined technologies are uniquely able to address the significant problems organisations face when attempting data masking projects. With it’s SaaS-based engine and a simple GUI, Axis DMsuite creates secure databases in as few as five clicks. Then, the Delphix patented virtualisation technology is able to create multi-terabyte virtual copies in minutes, using 90% less storage. By layering these two technologies together, organisations are able to generate completely secure data that can be provisioned instantly with impressive cost savings in both time and hardware.
“The collaboration of DMsuite and Delphix is exactly what the market has been waiting for,” said Mike Logan, President of Software and Operations at Axis Technology. “We anticipate that the intersection of our two technologies will be able to benefit our joint customers immensely, further streamlining the process of provisioning and masking data without slowing down business processes or time-to-market.”
“Our customers in healthcare and financial services require simple and effective solutions for securing sensitive data as it moves through the application lifecycle,” said Rick Caccia, Delphix VP of Marketing. “The combination of DMsuite’s easy-to-use, cloud-based masking and Delphix’s on-demand copy creation lays the foundation for the industry’s first and only secure virtual database solution.”