Selected Questions and Answers
Important note: The FAQs below are not a comprehensive resource, and only address a fraction of the available capabilities in IRI software or questions people ask.
Please visit the IRI solutions and products sections to learn more. Also, do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, or need details on specific features or options applicable to your use case(s).
How do I get ciphertext consistency (and thus referential integrity) with your masking tool?
By consistently applying the same masking function to the same plaintext each time, automatically and globally. This is done through rules associated with pattern-matched column names, or more reliably, through integrated data classes tied to identified data. Classified data is discovered / validated through robust built-in value search methods like RegEx pattern matches with custom-set accuracy thresholds, lookup value matches, fuzzy-match algorithms, named entity and facial recognition models, or JSON/XML/CSV/DB path (column) filters. Note that all IRI shield products -- FieldShield, DarkShield, and CellShield EE -- share the same data classes and deterministic masking functions to facilitate consistency, and thus data and referential integrity post-masking across your enterprise structured, semi-structured, and unstructured sources.
Notably, IRI's integrated data classification functionality also precludes the need for formally defined primary and foreign keys in database schema construction. This supports data integrity in relational databases without constraints just as it does in files, documents, and images.
Where constraints must be defined to automatically support referential integrity in artifically generated RDB test data are in the IRI DB subsetting wizard and DB test data synthesis wizards. If those constraints are not defined, it is still possible to subset and synthesize test data for DBs, but more manual intervention is required.
