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 Scramble database for vendor

Author  Topic 

lane0618
Posting Yak Master

134 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-24 : 12:59:42
We need to send our database to a vendor who does development for us, but we can't allow them to have all of the real data. Are there any tools out there that would allow us to scramble to the data before sending it? any other options?

Thanks!

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SwePeso
Patron Saint of Lost Yaks

30421 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-24 : 13:45:23
Encryption is better than obfuscation. There are commercial tools for this.

Peter Larsson
Helsingborg, Sweden
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lane0618
Posting Yak Master

134 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-24 : 14:10:42
But they can't use encrypted data for development...


Thanks

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SwePeso
Patron Saint of Lost Yaks

30421 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-24 : 14:20:36
So scrambling the data is different?

Peter Larsson
Helsingborg, Sweden
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lane0618
Posting Yak Master

134 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-24 : 14:29:48
I see your point, I should have been more clear. We need to "scramble" only certain fields that contain sensitive data such as SSN, b-day, etc.

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SwePeso
Patron Saint of Lost Yaks

30421 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-25 : 01:02:56
Encrypt/scramble only those columns necessary. Many commercial tools do this efficiently.
If you want to obfuscate only, there are function posted here on SQLTeam to do that.

cmdr_skywalker has a obfuscation function here http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=67752&SearchTerms=encrypt

Peter Larsson
Helsingborg, Sweden
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Westley
Posting Yak Master

229 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-25 : 04:09:00
Or can't you just delete those column? or just update those column with some dummy records? as development shouldn't care about the data itself, all they required will be fields and make sure their function works?
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KenW
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

391 Posts

Posted - 2006-08-25 : 13:17:58
I have a similar problem where I work because of HIPAA. I wrote a Delph front-end application that loops through each row of the data and uses a combination of either a random-number generator (for street numbers, SSN's, phone numbers, DOB) or a list of phony first names, phony last names, and a randomly grabbed first/last name pair. This obfuscates the data while still leaving it realistic enough for development purposes.

Ken
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dbadeb
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2006-12-28 : 09:39:44
Lane,
Were you able to find something to scramble the database for the vendor. I have the exact same situation.
quote:
Originally posted by lane0618

We need to send our database to a vendor who does development for us, but we can't allow them to have all of the real data. Are there any tools out there that would allow us to scramble to the data before sending it? any other options?

Thanks!

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FR33D0M_F1GHTR
Starting Member

3 Posts

Posted - 2008-03-27 : 09:18:35
I, too, have the same problem, with additional details being the database I need to scramble has 107 tables with a combined total of 2100 columns. I need something that I can use to quickly replace data in all 2100 columns with similar, yet different data. I looked at the functions posted in this thread. They were excellent. I need something for a much larger scale.

And another question, I have been a DBS for 8 years and I have never come across this before. Is this a common situation where a vendor would need a clients database?

As always, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

quote:
Originally posted by dbadeb

Lane,
Were you able to find something to scramble the database for the vendor. I have the exact same situation.
quote:
Originally posted by lane0618

We need to send our database to a vendor who does development for us, but we can't allow them to have all of the real data. Are there any tools out there that would allow us to scramble to the data before sending it? any other options?

Thanks!

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tripodal
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

259 Posts

Posted - 2008-03-28 : 15:26:46
I know that our front end uses md5 encryption freeware, all of the sensitive data is encrypted before it hits the server. I highly reccomend this to anyone storing sensitive data. We have a custom .dll writting which the application's call inorder to read / write said data. It was not an immensely difficult undertaking, it just requires likeminded dedication from everyone involved in development.
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info-Orbium
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2009-07-23 : 15:47:33
Hi.

Disclaimer: answering the question posted above about a scrambling product.

Orbium Software has recently released a database scrambling product called JumbleDB.
You can read about it and download a free trial from our web site: [url]http://www.orbiumsoftware.com/products/jumbledb-express/[/url]

Best regards,
Mike
Orbium Software
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EMarkM
Starting Member

16 Posts

Posted - 2009-07-24 : 08:17:38
When faced with a similar challenge, we just spent a little development time writing a stored procedure (one of each database in question) that scrambled all of the data in specific fields. It basically turns text like "Mr.|Kermit The|Frog|1|High Street|Congleton|" into "Mr.|Txmrxk Xht|Gxrf|N|Hgxh Txxrs|Cxtxlgnxc|".

In real life examples the data is much more difficult to read than what I wrote above.

The sproc takes around half an hour to run on a 150GB database with several tables/fields that need to be scrambled.
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