UC Berkeley tightens personal data security with data-masking tool

To better safeguard the personal data of its students, the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) has adopted a specialized data-masking technique in its application development work that effectively can hide data in plain sight by mixing it up.

Data such as students' first and last names can be switched around to camouflage the real names, and sensitive information such as student identification numbers also undergoes a gentle jumbling so what appears to the eye is not the true number. It's done with a tool called datamasker from dataguise. Steve McCabe, associate director of information in UC Berkeley's residential and student services program, says the advantage in using the dataguise tool is it significantly reduces security risks around personal, sensitive data.