IBM offers data masking technology to protect apps development data

IBM has unveiled a new data masking system to protect software development data.

The IBM Data Masking Solution is designed to transform data so that no sensitive information is exposed while allowing internal and external developers to perform software product design, development, testing and quality assurance.

The system is particularly useful for firms that share real business information containing customer details with their external software developers, as they improve and expand existing and active business applications.

This software can be used to "hide" those customer details from third parties.

Data masking is the process of identifying sensitive data and overlaying values that "mask" the sensitive data, but do not compromise the functional integrity of an application.

Today, data masking is accomplished manually by companies' technical subject matter experts. The task needs to be repeated as large companies have hundreds of business applications that are all tightly integrated.

IBM said its Data Masking Solution can execute the masking process quicker and cheaper across enterprises.