Data and interface protection

Safe testing with SNP DPM

Robust test data is essential for setting up new processes or applications. New processes need to be thoroughly tested using meaningful test data that can ensure a successful implementation.

It is best to perform tests with realistic test data, ideally based on real production data. Secure test data has become even more important and difficult to generate in this era of big data and strict compliance rules. That’s where SNP’s highly sophisticated, highly automated solutions come in. They provide the flexibility and security you need for testing and are designed to effectively support your project. SNP Data Provisioning and Masking (SNP DPM) and SNP Rapid Empty Shell Creation (SNP RESC) help you meet current and future requirements and supply the agility and competitiveness that will drive your company’s success.

A strong team – DPM and RESC

SNP Rapid Empty Shell Creation goes handin-hand with SNP Data Provisioning and Masking. While SNP DPM updates and masks test data in your current systems, SNP RESC can quickly create new, non-production systems from existing ones. SNP RESC can generate a system shell – a copy of the source system without the master data or transaction data – in just a few steps. This procedure vastly accelerates the copying process while significantly reducing the new system’s space requirements. System shells can be created on a regular schedule or on demand.

Each product is powerful on its own; however, combining them unleashes enormous flexibility. SNP RESC begins by creating a shell to serve as the target system. Next, SNP DPM selectively transfers masked or non-masked test data to the target system. Data imports can also update application data in development systems.

 Protecting data quickly and securely

Processing sensitive data is an important issue, especially under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. It involves risk, too. One of the best ways to contain that risk is by anonymizing or pseudonymizing the data. And that, too, requires the kind of outside assistance that SNP DPM provides. It supplies realistic and secure test data, accelerates development and change processes, enables more cost-effective test and training scenarios, and protects sensitive customer and product data from internal and external misuse. It configures anonymization settings easily and makes them reusable, anonymizes mass data quickly and consistently, and protects personal data as well as transaction data such as financial or logistics data. The underlying rule bases are stored centrally to make them always available and reusable.

Watch the interfaces! Closing security loopholes with SNP IFS

When anonymizing data, it’s a mistake to consider application systems in isolation. Instead, think about which systems communicate with one another. Your anonymization efforts will fail quickly if data is anonymized in one ERP system only to flow back in non-anonymized form over an interface with another system. That’s why systems should be thoroughly analyzed, and all interfaces identified. This can be done in various ways. Most users perform a manual check, followed by a system check. However, we urge against using manual processes: they’re labor-intensive, time-consuming, generally inefficient and more error-prone.

 Common problems in determining the interface environment include:

• Lack of knowledge about interface types and numbers
• Missing, incomplete or obsolete interface documentation
• No central access to interface information
• No suitable graphical representation of the interface topology
• Irrelevant data records and missing filter options that make manual analysis and evaluation laborious, expensive and frustrating.

As accuracy and speed play a decisive role here, you should only adopt solutions that are established and, most importantly, automated. SNP Interface Scanner – an integral part of our CrystalBridge transformation platform – produces accurate results in a flash.