Managing Oracle Data-Masking Policies

A data-masking policy contains a set of Oracle table columns and the masking strategy to use to hide the data.

You can manage your data-masking policies by performing any of the following operations:

Create a new policy
Edit an existing policy
Clone an existing policy to create a new one

The Commvault software provides different masking strategies based on the type of data that you want to mask.

Data Type	Available Masking Type
Character	Shuffling Format-preserving Fixed String
Number	Shuffling Numeric Range Numeric Variance
Date Timestamp Raw	Shuffling
Primary key Foreign key Decimal type column	Format-preserving Shuffling

For easier management, we recommend that you you have separate data-masking policies for each schema.

Best Practice: To avoid data inconsistencies, use the format-preserving data masking type for Primary Key, Foreign Key data types instead of shuffling.

warning

Data Masking changes are irreversible and might destroy the data.

Before You Begin

Set the java home path. For more information, see Setting the Java Path for Oracle Data Masking.

Procedure

From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > client > Oracle.
Determine the action that you want to take:
- To create a policy, right-click the instance, point to Data Masking, and then click Configure.
- To edit a policy:
  1. Right-click the instance, point to Data Masking, and then click Manage Policies.
  2. In the Data Masking Policy Name window, select the policy, and then click Manage.
- To clone a policy:
  1. Right-click the instance, point to Data Masking, and then click Manage Policies.
  2. In the Data Masking Policy Name window, select the policy that you want to copy, and then click Clone.
The Configure Data Masking dialog box appears.

If you clone a policy, then the software displays the information from the original policy.
In the Policy Name box, type a unique policy name.
From the Schema list, select the schema that you want to mask.

The software automatically populates the Table list with the tables that are part of the selected schema.
From the Table list, select the table that you want to mask.

The software automatically populates the Column box with the table columns.
To add data masking for a table, perform the following steps:
1. In the Column box, click the column that you want to mask.
2. In the Data Masking Type box, select the data masking type.
3. If applicable, enter the data masking inputs.
  - If you selected FIXED STRING then in the Inputs for Fixed String box, type the string that the software uses as a replacement.
  - If you selected NUMERIC_RANGE, then under Inputs for Numeric Range, in the Min and Max boxes, enter the minimum and maximum value the software uses to generate the random number.
  - If you selected NUMERIC_VARIANCE, then under Inputs for Numeric Variance, in the Max Percentage box, enter the maximum percent that the software uses to vary the data.
4. Click Add.
To remove data masking for a table, in the box at the bottom, select the table, and then click Remove.
Click OK.

Result

The software creates or modifies the policy and automatically applies the policy rules when you clone the database, or manually mask the data.