Major Financial Services Corporation

Focus on core business while tightening test data security

As a financial services organization, this client holds sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) that needs to be protected at all costs. Like many organizations with a decades-long history, several hardware platforms, including mainframe, and databases were in use, with some of the largest databases holding over one billion records.

Application testing is an important part of ensuring the best service and performance for its client base, and the test automation manager realized that using production data for test purposes could leave it open to misuse, as he explains: “Although we had some home-grown data masking techniques in place, there was a corporate mandate to be more structured in our data protection, and this includes our test environment. Our method was also quite manual, and we felt there must be a better way to manage this without using precious resources that should be deployed to enrich our applications, much more in line with our core business, of course.”

Voltage SecureData offers Format-Preserving Encryption, but we also have some unique requirements for our test data. A feature that was important in our decision for Voltage SecureData Enterprise is its ability to easily reverse data encryption.

Voltage SecureData Enterprise delivers true multi-platform data protection

Different divisions within the organization had experience with Voltage SecureData Enterprise by OpenText™, which offers an end-to-end, data-centric approach to enterprise data protection. Leveraging this internal expertise, and after having received feedback on its user-friendly operation, the team took a more detailed look at Voltage SecureData Enterprise. The solution can easily be used with virtually any system, ranging from decades-old custom applications to the latest enterprise programs. It found that the multi-platform abilities include native mainframe integration, which is important in preserving data formatting and referential integrity while working with a variety of data sources. This is the only way to create consistent test data sets. Voltage SecureData Enterprise de-identifies production data and creates structurally valid test data so test engineers can perform Quality Assurance (QA) tests or conduct data analysis without exposing sensitive data. The Voltage SecureData management console enables easy policy control and provides audit capabilities.

The test automation manager comments: “Voltage SecureData offers Format-Preserving Encryption, but we also have some unique requirements for our test data. A feature that was important in our decision for Voltage SecureData Enterprise is its ability to easily reverse data encryption. This may seem contrary, but we have use cases where we need access to clear data, for instance to validate the calculations within our test cases and ensure that our processes are working correctly.”

User-friendly ‘set and forget’ approach

The organization is considering a future move to a cloud environment and was pleased to discover that Voltage SecureData Enterprise is fully compatible with this, ensuring high availability and performance across a multi-cloud hybrid IT infrastructure, ready for whatever the future has in store.

The test automation manager concludes: “We needed a user-friendly tool to support our test data management requirements and Voltage SecureData Enterprise was our answer. We have a very complex infrastructure across various hardware platforms and databases, including mainframe based data processing, and struggled to find a solution. We love Voltage SecureData Enterprise’s ‘set and forget’ approach. It ensures we can conduct in-depth application testing without worrying about exposing any of our sensitive data in the process or taking resources away from our core business.”

We love Voltage SecureData Enterprise’s ‘set and forget’ approach. It ensures we can conduct in-depth application testing without worrying about exposing any of our sensitive data in the process or taking resources away from our core business.