30 | Test data
The testers’ guide to
masking, obfuscating
and scrambling
What data do you use for testing and development –
especially when this crucial work is increasingly being off-
shored? Huw Price of Grid-Tools says that the trio of masking,
obfuscating and scrambling offer a practical solution.
T
here is unrest brewing in IT online applications and also use data data where you cannot identify an
QA departments all over the generation tools such as Datamaker to original customer, account or secure
globe. A frustration borne out build accurate test data. entity from the masked data and
of a lack of recognition within At some stage during the the overall data trends cannot be
their own organA major area of interest development and testing lifecycle, easily identified.
is the question of what data to use for users will access production data.
development and testing, especially in Here we outline some of the simpler Where to scramble
offshore applications. Currently, most techniques to obfuscate or mask the The first consideration when designing
companies use copies of production a scrambling architecture is where
data. This has obvious security issues but you want to physically scramble
also has several disadvantages familiar the data. Is it good enough to copy
to all CIOs. Copied data is usually out production, move it into development,
of date by the time it is used for testing run a few scripts and off you go?
making time specifi c tests irrelevant I would put this into the ‘doing as
and new functionality will not have any little as possible’ category, as there
pertinent data with which to test it. are a few specific problems with this
Multiple users will set up specifi c test approach. For instance, the live data
scenarios which will be destroyed every lives unscrambled in a development
time production is re-copied to testing. environment for a time; the scripts
Large copies of production data on less
Copied data is usually
to scramble the data tend to get
powerful testing hardware make queries forgotten, are not kept updated
and searches run slowly and take up lots
out of date by the time
and tend to be built by a single DBA
of expensive disk space.
it is used for testing
who may move on and there is
In addition to full-sized copies, making time specific no traceability.
most companies will have additional
tests irrelevant and new
Better and more systematic
approaches to building testing approaches to data scrambling
environments, which include: a small
functionality will not have
will depend upon your specific
development database in which users
any pertinent data with
infrastructure. Many sites, for example,
create data by hand, this usually which to test it. Multiple will already have copies of production
contains a large amount of invalid
users will set up specific
data for use as reporting databases
data; an extract subset of production
test scenarios which will
or for access by data warehousing
data for use in development using toolset. These copy databases are
tools such as GT Subset. They
be destroyed every time
protected by security layers and access
also use capture playback tools production is re-copied control. The reporting databases
such as QTP, Forecast Studio etc
to testing.
can then be used as a source for
to populate transactions using the scrambling extracts without impacting
T.E.S.T | March 09 March 09 | T.E.S.T
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