Sensitive Data Anonymisation for Secure Innovation
A leading telecommunications company faced challenges protecting data privacy while enabling efficient testing and development within its environment. Their production datasets contained millions of records with sensitive personally identifiable information (PII), posing security and regulatory risks when shared across environments. Skillfield developed a robust anonymisation solution that masked PII while maintaining data consistency and usability.
This secure and scalable solution empowered the client to innovate confidently, allowing teams to work with high-quality, anonymised data without compromising privacy.
The Problem
Our client, a major player in the telecommunications industry, faced the challenge of ensuring data privacy while enabling seamless testing and development. Their production environment housed extensive datasets containing sensitive PII, often spanning millions of records.
Sharing these datasets with lower environments, such as development and testing, posed serious privacy risks and potential regulatory violations.
A simple masking solution proved inadequate due to the complexity of the datasets, multiple file formats, and the necessity for data consistency across environments.
The client needed a sophisticated anonymisation approach that could maintain data integrity while securing sensitive information against breaches and regulatory non-compliance.
The Solution
Skillfield collaborated with the client to design and deploy an advanced anonymisation tool to mask PII securely within the production data environment. This tool operates within the production environment, preserving the original data while generating anonymised replicas for use in lower environments. Its key features include:
- Leveraging configurable schema-based logic, the tool adapts to multiple file formats, including CSV and fixed-width files.
- It systematically identifies and masks PII while ensuring data consistency across datasets.
- A 256-bit encryption and hashing mechanism provides irreversible anonymisation across files, maintaining consistent anonymised outputs for testing.
- The solution also introduces a synthetic data generation capability, allowing teams to create tailored test datasets by adjusting encryption keys for enhanced flexibility.
The Outcome
The anonymisation tool provides a secure, scalable solution for generating anonymised datasets for testing and development.
By preserving data integrity while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations, the client was able to mitigate the risk of breaches and regulatory penalties.
Developers now access realistic, high-quality datasets without exposing sensitive information, improving workflow efficiency and accuracy.
Ultimately, Skillfield’s solution empowers our client to maintain privacy compliance while fostering innovation, allowing them to securely manage and utilise complex datasets across multiple environments with confidence.