Data masking

Organization must determine the situations in which the protection of personal data or other confidential data is particularly important, and if necessary implement the hiding of such data using suitably strong methods, for example using masking, pseudonymization or anonymization.

In addition to anonymization and pseudonymization, possible techniques that can be used include:

• encryption
• resetting or deleting characters
• changing values
• replacing values with hashes

Pseudonymisation means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.

Anonymisation means modifying personal information so that the person can no longer be identified from it. For example, data can be roughened to a general level or data about an individual can be deleted. Identification is irreversibly prevented in anonymisation, in contrast to pseudonymisation, where data can be restored to their original form using additional information.