Client Introduction & Business Requirement
Our client is a global payments company. Their requirement was for a scalable, secure and reliable Data Masking and Data Transfer solution.
Moving a subset of data from Production to Test Environments for Performance Testing, Pre-Production testing is a common scenario in any enterprise. However, this is not an easy task to achieve due to the following challenges:
- Sensitive data that exists in the Product data cannot be copied to Test Environments, without proper data masking.
- Production Clusters are usually isolated from Test Clusters, with no direct connectivity between clusters. So, traditional methods would involve landing the data into an intermediate storage, and then copying it to Test Environments.
- When large datasets were required to be transferred, the intermediate storage option quickly becomes a bottleneck.
- Speed for data transfer is key when working with Large datasets.
- As traditional data copying tools don’t solve these big data challenges, we employed MLens, the world’s fastest secured copying tool across secured clusters.
Solution Overview
- After our client shared their architecture and topology, we deployed a solution wherein the data transfer worked through a Relay Server, without the need for any intermediary storage. Data would move from one intermediary node to the next. With multiple intermediary nodes in place, we solved the challenge of lack of connectivity between Clusters.
- The data transfer also allows for the compression of files, following which the file format remains unchanged. What’s more, MLens allows for custom data parallelism, so the client may choose to skip columns of data that don’t require masking, mention the ranges for masking, and so on.
Business Benefits
There are ample solution providers who enable Data Masking and Data Transfer. Here are a few reasons that set MLens apart from these players:
- We make use of intermediary nodes during data masking & transfer, something that other solution providers do not use. Our solution also has the unique ability to perform simultaneous Data Masking and Transfer, hence completing the job in flash speed. The transfer process supports custom masking, thus handing over the controls to the client themselves.
- In the case of sensitive data transfer from one environment to another, it is of due importance that the process remains secure and fast. By providing a highly agile and custom solution, MLens enabled its client to have full control over their data transmission, masking and compression.
