FieldShield FAQs

Jump to: About FieldShield | Features & Capabilities | Data Masking Functions | Compliance & Security | Deployment & Integration | Performance & Scalability | Support & Licensing

About FieldShield

What is IRI FieldShield and what does it do?

IRI FieldShield is a leading data masking and privacy solution that locates, classifies, and protects sensitive information such as PII, PHI, PCI, and other confidential data. It can mask data both at rest and in motion, ensuring privacy across databases, files, and applications while preserving the usability of data for analytics, testing, and reporting.

How is FieldShield different from other data masking tools?

FieldShield combines sensitive data discovery, field-level masking, re-identification risk scoring, and audit-ready reporting in one platform. It supports multiple data sources, including databases, flat files, and cloud storage, and offers both static and dynamic masking. Its proven track record with enterprises and government agencies underscores its reliability and versatility.

Who can benefit from FieldShield?

IT teams, data analysts, database administrators, and compliance officers can all benefit from FieldShield. It enables secure test data management, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation for sensitive information across the enterprise.

Features and Capabilities

What are the main features of FieldShield?

• Sensitive data discovery and classification across structured and semi-structured sources
• Column- and field-level masking to protect only sensitive information
• Deterministic and conditional masking for preserving data relationships
• Multi-source and multi-target job support for efficiency
• Comprehensive audit logging and risk scoring for compliance documentation

How does FieldShield discover sensitive data?

It uses pattern matching, lookup tables, fuzzy logic, and regular expressions to identify PII, PHI, PCI, and other confidential information. Results are displayed in dashboards and reports, which can feed directly into automated masking operations.

How does FieldShield preserve data usability?

FieldShield applies masking selectively and deterministically, preserving referential integrity and enabling meaningful analytics and testing without exposing sensitive information.

Data Masking Functions

What types of data masking functions does FieldShield offer?

FieldShield includes encryption, hashing, tokenization, pseudonymization, redaction, scrambling, randomization, blurring, bucketing, synthetic data generation, and custom masking routines. Conditional masking using SQL, joins, and calculations is also supported.

Can FieldShield create test or synthetic data?

Yes. FieldShield can generate realistic test data using existing schemas, select values from predefined sets, or create fully synthetic data to support development and QA environments while preserving privacy.

What is National ID masking and why is it important?

FieldShield applies masking rules to government-issued identifiers to protect privacy while maintaining the ability to conduct meaningful analysis or reporting.

Compliance and Security

How does FieldShield help with regulatory compliance?

FieldShield enables organizations to comply with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA/CPRA, PCI DSS, POPI, LGPD, PDPA, and other global privacy regulations. It provides detailed audit logs, risk scoring, and compliance reports for governance, auditing, and regulatory purposes.

How does FieldShield reduce the risk of data breaches?

By masking sensitive data, FieldShield ensures that even if data is stolen, it cannot be used maliciously. Non-reversible functions, encryption, and pseudonymization protect sensitive fields while keeping data functional for analytics or testing.

Does FieldShield provide re-identification risk assessment?

Yes. FieldShield calculates quasi-identifier risk scores and generates reports that help organizations evaluate the likelihood of data re-identification, enabling safer sharing and processing of sensitive datasets.

Deployment and Integration

Can FieldShield work with dynamic data?

Yes. The FieldShield SDK supports dynamic masking in motion for applications written in C/C++, Java, or .NET, protecting data during processing or transfer.

How does FieldShield integrate with other tools?

It works with ETL, replication, migration, and subsetting workflows. FieldShield is compatible with IRI Voracity modules, Windocks, Actifio, Commvault, and CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, GitLab, and Azure DevOps.

How easy is it to create and manage masking jobs?

Masking jobs can be designed in Eclipse-based Workbench GUI using visual wizards or scripted in 4GL. Features like version control, project management, and automated rule application make job design, modification, and reuse efficient.

How versatile is FieldShield for meeting custom business logic?

FieldShield supports conditional protections using SQL SELECT syntax, INCLUDE/OMIT logic, joins, calculations, and data cleansing within the same job. Rules can vary per column while preserving referential integrity.

Performance and Scalability

Can FieldShield handle large datasets efficiently?

Yes. FieldShield leverages the high-performance IRI CoSort engine to process large database tables and flat files quickly. It can perform masking during ETL, pre-load operations, or database refreshes and scales horizontally with Hadoop or distributed processing.

How is FieldShield more efficient than bulk encryption?

Field-level protection reduces CPU and I/O overhead, allows selective masking of rows or columns, and preserves referential integrity. It runs faster than full-database encryption and reduces operational complexity.

Support and Licensing

What support options are available for FieldShield users?

IRI provides direct support, global representatives, and consulting partners to assist with evaluation, deployment, and ongoing use, ensuring rapid response to technical or compliance-related questions.

How is FieldShield licensed and priced?

FieldShield is licensed for perpetual use, with volume discounts. Five masking engine licenses are included free with IRI Voracity, providing additional discovery, governance, and analytics capabilities without extra cost.