Link: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::NO::P11_QUESTION_ID:54226589195717#PAGETOP

Interesting running thread on Asktom.oracle.com regarding datamasking. I provided my two cents into the picture.

Does Oracle provide a package or function for data masking ? For example, in a
development environment, for data protection purposes, the information of the table
customer needs to be masked.

create table customer (last_name varchar2(25), first_name varchar2(25), address
varchar2(25));
insert into customer values('Doe', 'John', '10 someroad st');

In the production environment, if we do a select on customer, the result would be without
any surprise:

select *
from customer;

LAST_NAME FIRST_NAME ADDRESS
-------------- -------------- --------------------
Doe John 10 someroad st

In the development environment, the same information needs to be masked for something
like:

LAST_NAME FIRST_NAME ADDRESS
-------------- -------------- --------------------
Ahd Uiea 55 xxxx ue

It doesn't really need to make sense, it doesn't need to be readable. Just needs to be
masked. Does Oracle supply anything for that purpose at all ? I tried to find but didn't
have much success. I found a third party software that will do the job. If you want to, I
can post its name here.

Thanks Tom and happy 2006.

Gleisson Henrique

and we said...

No, we can "hide" the information (Oracle 9i provides for row hiding and Oracle 10g
provided for row and/or column hiding)

But data obfuscation - no, it cannot do that. You actually need to physically obscure
the data itself prior to storage (and it had better be a one way obfuscation). Think
about things like indexes and such.

Don't forget, as soon as you start obscuring data, you start to loose the natural
distribution of data. Do not be surprised when your obfuscated system behaves entirely
differently from your "clear text" system - clustering factors, data lengths,
distributions of values - all will be radically different.

I'll post to see if anyone has a suggestion on a tool to use sparingly on names/addresses
and the like.