IRI Announces Version 6 of the FieldShield Data Masking Tool

Latest Release Supports New Data Classification and Discovery Infrastructure & Cloud Sources 

MELBOURNE, Fla., Dec. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc., the 46-year-old pioneer in big data management and data-centric security software, has announced a major new version of its FieldShield data masking package for masking PII in structured data sources on-premise and in the cloud. FieldShield V6 expands significantly on the features in V5 announced at the end of 2020, particularly those involved in its built-in data classification and discovery processes.

First launched in 2011, IRI FieldShield was one of the world's first data masking tools, and the first to target personally identifiable information (PII) in flat files and relational databases off the mainframe. Since then, FieldShield has been widely adopted by financial, healthcare, and government database users because it preserves referential integrity and supports custom logic in data masking and test data jobs.

New features of FieldShield Version 6 include:

* Expanded Data Source Support
In addition to JDBC and ODBC connected relational databases, on-premise flat files and Excel sheets, FieldShield now also supports ASN.1-encoded CDR files at telco sites using the OSS Nokalva runtime, plus flat files in Amazon S3, Azure Blob, and Google Cloud Platform cloud folders.

* Modernized Data Classification & Discovery
A new, faster, and more ergonomic data classification infrastructure in the IRI Workbench GUI for FieldShield supports global or project-specific data class groups to address multiple privacy laws and sensitivity labels, plus out of the box search matchers and reusable masking rules. Also included are migration tools for existing data classes, and many additional pattern and set file matchers for sensitive data discovery in compliance with data privacy laws like HIPAA and the GDPR.

* DarkShield API Integration
For semi- and un-structured text embedded in RDB columns, it is now possible to call a column-level DarkShield function into a FieldShield job to find PII in the same data classes, and mask it with the same rules, as FieldShield.

* Improved PII Discovery Dashboard
In addition to the HTML5 charts from data profiling and discovery reports introduced in FieldShield 5, this release adds charts that display information about the data source and classes of PII defined in the job, and how long the job took.

* More Built-in Masking Rules
New out-of-the-box multi-source methods include richer email address and more NID value generators, nested functions to combine string manipulations and set value lookups with existing masking rules, field (column)-level comments, numeric manipulation functions, and format-preserving scrambling.

According to IRI SVP David Friedland, "FieldShield 6 – as well as the Voracity data management platform that includes it – continues to provide CISOs, DPOs, DBAs and DevOps staff interested in data masking with the best combination of functional extensibility, speed in volume, and affordable licensing they need to neutralize data breaches, comply with data privacy laws, and provide intelligent test data.

About FieldShield
Like its sister products in the IRI Data Protector suite – DarkShield and CellShield EE, plus RowGen for test data synthesis – FieldShield is used worldwide for data privacy law compliance, data breach nullification, and test data creation. All of these tools are front-ended in the IRI Workbench GUI, built on Eclipse, where they share PII data class definitions and masking rules.

Contact Information
Alyssa Ardhya, +1-321-777-8889, ext. 211

SOURCE IRI