Securing test data in line with international legislation

“Overseas companies have already been forced to comply with legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard,” he says. “The implications of non-compliance are very significant with organisations facing the possibility of being put out of business, or having directors being held personally culpable by law.”

In Europe, data protection is therefore seen as non-negotiable and so all organisations have had to implement a data protection policy. Locally, government is in the process of working on the Protection of Personal Information Bill.

“While the Protection of Personal Information Bill is not law yet, local companies should act now to be ready for the legislation and to align themselves with global trends and ensure they are governed by them in order to remain globally competitive. Increasingly local organisations are going to be looking beyond our borders to European and North America markets for work and they will need to demonstrate that they adhere to international regulations if they are to be successful,” he says.

The need for data masking

De Oliveira says the security around personal data is generally far less stringent in the testing environment than it is in the production environment. This means that people's personal information could be put at risk by companies failing to take adequate measures to protect the information during the testing phase of software development.

Data Express protects privacy while enhancing the reliability of test data, enabling companies to quickly and efficiently extract relevant masked subsets of application data for development testing. This allows for accurate, secure and reliable generation of test data while ensuring they meet the latest compliance and privacy regulations.

“Data Express therefore makes meeting international legislated security requirements and the required reporting on the steps taken to preserve the privacy of people's personal information far easier for companies. It will also leave them ideally placed to comply when local legislation is introduced,” he says.

In addition to data security, Data Express drastically reduces the amount of test data leading to less storage and consequent cost savings. It also greatly reduces the time to produce test data, a process that is usually done manually or with partial automation. At the core of the product is a data repository that stores the definitions and locations of all production data. as well as the rules for reducing and masking the test data. By the use of intelligent and managed test data reduction, companies can save up to 90% on their test data storage requirements.

International track record

Data Express has been used by international companies, with great success, says deOliveira.

“International financial services group, Santander, used Data Express to not only comply with privacy laws, but also maintain data integrity and quality. Data Express also reduced the amount of test data used in each environment from 9 terabytes (TB) of data to 300 gigabytes (97% reduction),” he says.

Italian Bank, Banca Intesa S.p.A. also used Data Express to comply with regulatory requirements for Basel II in order to reduce operational risk. It also wanted to reduce the amount of test data along with testing errors and avoid interruptions to its business services.

Data Express fulfilled these requirements with a managed, centralised and repeatable test environment and a reduction in test data from 34 TB to 3TB of data (90% storage saving).

“Data Express has therefore shown it is able to optimise and secure the testing environment and is an important suite of software for companies wanting to comply with upcoming local and international legislation and reduce the amount of storage needed within the testing environment,” he concludes.