Test Data Masking

In this case study we will look at the challenge, solution and benefits to a test data masking solution for a mortgage processing company.

INDUSTRY: LENDING
INDUSTRY APPROPRIATE: ANY INDUSTRY
DEPARTMENT: IT, OPERATIONS, INSURANCE

Challenge:

A mortgage processing company was required for compliance and security reasons to mask the test data of personnel information of the loans they were processing for testing. This information was in various file formats (PDF, Excel, Word, TIFF, etc.) The client was spending about thirty minutes per loan document to manually mask the data and create a link back to the original document. Because of the time involved they could never justify creating enough data to perform stress testing. They also lacked a proper audit trail and dashboard of activity.

Definition of masking: The process of obfuscating or altering sensitive data to protect its confidentiality while maintaining its functional and referential integrity.

Mask and randomize mortgage loan package data

• Mortgage processing firms cannot test using production data as it contains real-world information and can lead to various penalties and customer issues.
• A digital mortgage loan package contains multiple application and verification documents within it.
• Many, if not all, of these documents contain sensitive data.
• The documents may be in different formats (PDF, XML, Excel, Image, etc.)
• All subsequent documents must align to the top-most (parent) loan package number for successful processing (data/referential integrity)

Solution:

Using The Odyssey Digital Automation Platform, gather data from any/multiple source(s) and any file type. Odyssey built custom solution assists the software quality teams in delivering multiple scenarios in less time. Easily masking test data at scale for functional and non-functional testing. This custom solution automatically performs the following steps:

1. Understand client requirements and build associated templates.
2. Collect production data.
   1. Odyssey provides a screen to the client to capture desired data.
3. Extract and replace data.
   1. Using field masking templates, Odyssey extracts fields into a metadata file and sends them to its masking engine.
   2. Data is masked and the data is returned to Odyssey.
   3. Odyssey transforms the metadata into the source file type and submits to the client designated destination.
4. Odyssey creates an XML audit file describing each masking transaction.

Benefits:

Reduced Masked Test Data Generation
The solution reduced the time to create a single masked test mortgage loan package from thirty-minutes to under 30 seconds.

Test Coverage Increase
The solution allowed manual testers to test more variety of test scenarios in a shorter time.

Test Data Diversity
The solution allowed more diverse test data to test multiple scenario types and events.

Scaled Test Data Generation
The solution allows for scaling of mass test data for non-functional (load, stress, performance, etc.) testing.

Increased Visibility
Using the built in audit log of Odyssey all activity was logged. Several levels of dashboards were created to report on the status of all activities.

Best of both worlds
Client chose a hybrid SaaS model that allowed the data to remain inside their firewall while the orchestration was performed in the cloud which alleviated the IT departments involvement.

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