Report > The Third Annual State of Data Compliance and Security Report: 2026 Edition

Key Terms to Know

  • Data Masking: The process of protecting sensitive data by replacing real values with fictitious values. 
    • Dynamic Data Masking: Role-based, temporary, reversible obfuscation, which may lead to data re-identification and breach by bad actors. 
    • Static Data Masking: Permanently replaces sensitive information, such as PII and PHI with fictitious, yet realistic data. 
  • Data Subsetting: A minimized production dataset that redacts table columns for sensitive fields. 
  • Data Virtualization: A technology that provides fast, easy access to data across different sources and formats. It does not physically move or copy the data. Instead, it creates a virtual layer or virtual data copies that streamline access to the right underlying datasets.  
  • Production-Like Data: See realistic data. 
  • Realistic Data: Masked data that resembles real data. This is also known as production-like data. 
  • Sensitive Data: Information that must be protected and kept confidential. Examples include sensitive consumer data, such as PII and PHI. 
  • Synthetic Data: Synthetically generated, net-new data that may or may not provide data realism and referential integrity vis-a-vis production data. 
  • Test Data Management: The process for providing controlled data access to modern teams throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). 
  • Tokenization: A data protection technique with separation-of-data control. The sensitive value is removed and replaced with a non-sensitive placeholder called a “token,” while the real value lives in a secure vault.