Selected Press Releases

Select-and-Click Masking, Encryption, and Pseudonymization

Melbourne, Fla. (November 13, 2014) – Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc., The CoSort® Company and developer of FieldShield® data masking software for the enterprise, has released a low-cost security add-in for Microsoft Excel® 2010 and 2013. IRI CellShield™ allows users to directly mask, encrypt, and pseudonymize the sensitive data they select.

CellShield works via a simple user interface from the Excel toolbar. After selecting the range of values to protect (or reveal, if authorized), users click on a CellShield function to change the values in-place, or write them to a new worksheet. Results are immediate, and available for use in other spreadsheets or export files.

“CellShield is a very simple, but effective, way to mitigate the risk of security breaches and help comply with privacy laws applicable to data in Excel,” observed Femitha Majeed, a consultant at the multinational information security assurance firm SecureITLab. “Different security functions for each column harden the target by creating multiple obstacles for network hackers or laptop thieves,” she added. CellShield’s support for format-preserving encryption, in particular, “is a PCI DSS-compliant means of securing primary account (credit card) numbers stored in spreadsheets that can also bait and expose those in possession of the encrypted values.”

CellShield users on different PCs can also securely share documents with each other; one user encrypts values and the other decrypts with the matching algorithm and key. Reverse pseudonymization is also possible if the CellShield user has access to the restore file generated during pseudonymization. Partial or full-cell masking (character redaction), however, is a non-reversible function.

CellShield uses a subset of functions from, and is compatible with, the full IRI FieldShield data masking package for multiple data sources. As a companion product to FieldShield, CellShield can restore values FieldShield protected (and vice versa). 

CellShield is being offered at a special introductory price of $35 per PC. More information on CellShield operations is covered in the blog article series here. 

About IRI, The CoSort Company
Founded in 1978, IRI develops fast, Eclipse-supported software tools for managing and protecting big data in: legacy migration, DW/BI, and application development environments. IRI’s major products include: CoSort® for sorting, transformation, and reporting; FACT™ for VLDB unloads and reorgs; NextForm® for data and DB conversion; FieldShield for static and dynamic data masking; and, RowGen™ for creating safe, realistic test data from your metadata.

Press inquiries only to:
Jason Koivu, Marcom Director
IRI, The CoSort Company
(321) 777-8889 ext. 210
jasonk@iri.com