TestBench for IBM i vs. IRI FieldShield

Managing and testing data for IBM i, IBM iSeries, and AS/400 systems necessitates a meticulous approach to validating intricate applications, right down to the data they rely on. TestBench for IBM i provides a powerful and dependable framework for managing test data, verifying its integrity, and conducting unit tests, all while integrating effortlessly with other tools to enhance overall application quality. Rather than replicating the entire production database, you can concentrate on the critical data necessary for your testing operations. By selecting or sampling relevant data without compromising referential integrity, you can optimize the testing workflow. It becomes straightforward to pinpoint which data fields need protection, allowing you to implement various obfuscation methods to ensure data security. Furthermore, you can keep track of every data operation, including inserts, updates, and deletions, as well as their intermediate states. Establishing automatic alerts for data abnormalities through customizable rules can greatly minimize the need for manual monitoring. This methodology eliminates the cumbersome save and restore processes, clarifying any discrepancies in test outcomes that may arise from insufficient initial data. While comparing outputs remains a standard practice for validating test results, it can be labor-intensive and prone to errors; however, this cutting-edge solution can significantly cut down on the time required for testing, resulting in a more efficient overall process. With TestBench, not only can you improve your testing precision, but you can also conserve valuable resources, allowing for a more streamlined development cycle. Ultimately, adopting such innovative tools can lead to enhanced software quality and more reliable deployment outcomes.

IRI FieldShield® offers an effective and cost-efficient solution for the discovery and de-identification of sensitive data, such as PII, PHI, and PAN, across both structured and semi-structured data sources. With its user-friendly interface built on an Eclipse-based design platform, FieldShield allows users to perform classification, profiling, scanning, and static masking of data at rest. Additionally, the FieldShield SDK or a proxy-based application can be utilized for dynamic data masking, ensuring the security of data in motion. Typically, the process for masking relational databases and various flat file formats, including CSV, Excel, LDIF, and COBOL, involves a centralized classification system that enables global searches and automated masking techniques. This is achieved through methods like encryption, pseudonymization, and redaction, all designed to maintain realism and referential integrity in both production and testing environments. FieldShield can be employed to create sanitized test data, mitigate the impact of data breaches, or ensure compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, PDPA, and PCI-DSS, among others. Users can perform audits through both machine-readable and human-readable search reports, job logs, and re-identification risk assessments. Furthermore, it offers the flexibility to mask data during the mapping process, and its capabilities can also be integrated into various IRI Voracity ETL functions, including federation, migration, replication, subsetting, and analytical operations. For database clones, FieldShield can be executed in conjunction with platforms like Windocks, Actifio, or Commvault, and it can even be triggered from CI/CD pipelines and applications, ensuring versatility in data management practices.