Perforce Delphix Continuous Compliance for Data Masking on AWS

My main use case for Perforce Delphix  is data virtualization and data masking. Data masking involves using algorithms and masking techniques to mask data, and virtualization puts the data into lower environments. There is no need to wait for database administrators, developers, or anyone to refresh the data into lower environments. The process is very quick and can be done on-demand.

Perforce Delphix  has impacted my organization positively in terms of data virtualization. It was very helpful for test data management because the manpower that we needed to manage all the databases and wait for database administrators was really minimized. It was also very helpful in terms of audits and regulation maintenance. In this way, it has really benefited our organization positively.

The best features Perforce Delphix offers include its ability to profile data and find sensitive information, as well as suggest masking algorithms that can be applied. It also has DevOps features and the ability to virtualize data really quickly without depending on anyone else. The process is quick and easy to execute.

The sensitive data discovery and masking suggestions have helped my team by finding sensitive data at the row and column level. It provides an inventory after the discovery and masking, and also provides masking algorithms such as character mapping algorithms, sensitive discovery algorithms, or date and time functions. There is also the ability to create custom inventory maps to mask fields accordingly.

The profiler jobs are really quick and find sensitive details rapidly while showing what needs to be masked. Regarding virtualization, the VDBs do not consume complete storage that resides on-premise or in the cloud. Once the dSource, which is the actual database, is attached, it takes the transaction logs and keeps in touch with the database. If attaching a dSource takes one day, there is no need to wait that same amount of time for every virtual database created thereafter. VDBs are quick and lightweight, making them very cost-effective in terms of usage and storage.

When working with masking algorithms, there can be issues or lag if they are not configured properly. The tool also requires assistance with attaching the GenRocket  feature, which is a synthetic data generator used for masking real-looking data. If needed, users must seek help from the GenRocket  feature because it is highly effective. Perforce Delphix has its own synthetic data generator based on AI, which is developing, but this feature could still be improved.

Perforce Delphix requires having technical experts in place, such as DevOps engineers, to work with the tool effectively. Training and certifications are needed to work on the tool, which can be provided by Perforce Delphix. Teams would need Perforce Delphix experts, technology specialists, and DevOps engineers, and the necessary training should be completed before working with the tool.

I have been using Perforce Delphix for around three years, and it is a very good tool for data masking and virtualization, predominantly for virtualization because it performs very well when scaling up to meet demand.

Regarding Perforce Delphix's AI capabilities, people need to be more informed about them because there must be an auditor in place to review the audits, governance, and security being put in place by the AI. An actually certified auditor must go through the governance that has been implemented by the AI. This feature is developing and needs monitoring in place as well.

For sensitive data generation, Perforce Delphix has a small AI running. It is somewhat accurate, but it cannot be relied upon for larger data sets, and the GenRocket feature would be needed in place. This area still needs improvement.

Regarding specific outcomes or metrics from using Perforce Delphix, I would recommend this tool especially for larger data sets. If you are maintaining enterprise-level data with larger data sets such as 10 TB, 12 TB, or more, this tool is appropriate. If you are running a small-scale industry with limited budget, Perforce Delphix may not be suitable because it is costly. If you have a larger business and are going to implement Perforce Delphix into your organization, it is a good choice. However, if it is a small-scale industry, alternatives should be considered because provisioning Perforce Delphix is really costly. It really does provide the best outcomes that can be expected, and it can be relied upon if you have a very large-scale industry, very large data sets, enterprise-level data, or are managing enterprise-level applications. The time saved is around 60 percent in terms of waiting for other workflows to be completed and waiting for data analysts and database administrators to refresh data. In terms of manual work, it also saves a lot of time.

I give this review an overall rating of 9 out of 10.

We are using Perforce Delphix  for test data management, where we perform data masking, virtualization, and create VDBs from Perforce Delphix  for data virtualization.

For example, I work for a banking client that has a lot of PII information, which stands for personal identifiable information. We use Perforce Delphix to connect to the database, analyze the data for PII, and identify all the PII fields such as first name, last name, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. We finalize the list of PII columns and perform masking by identifying different masking algorithms. The masking algorithms ensure that if you want to mask a mobile number, it appears in the same format as a ten-digit number, but it is not real-time data. Similarly, if there is a customer named Samantha Prabhu, we replace it with something else such as Richa Joshi, ensuring that the data is altered and not live customer information. For virtualization, we use Perforce Delphix to virtualize data and create different VDBs. Given that database sizes in production environments can be in terabytes, we cannot take the entire dataset into the testing environment for various testing or developmental purposes, so we create VDBs. The VDBs can reduce the data size, such as one terabyte being shrunk to one GB, enabling its use for diverse purposes including analysis and providing the VDB to testing or development teams for business and analytics. We use a virtualization engine to transfer the data from production to testing environments in a smaller subset.

It is an everyday task to mask the data for different databases across various applications in banking clients, where multiple applications hold different kinds of PII. We need to analyze the databases using Perforce Delphix and perform masking daily, and for virtualization, the same applies. We take snapshots, record the data, and maintain copies as VDB and PDB in our virtualization engine for access when needed, such as when testing requires a subset of six-month-old data. If we have that data in our VDB, it can be quickly provided to the testing team for their purposes without lengthy authorization processes related to data extraction from production.

Test data management is crucial in the testing and development life cycle, as correct data drives the development of valuable features in applications. Quality data is essential for effective testing, enabling the discovery of issues and bugs. Perforce Delphix is a valuable tool that ensures the delivery of compliant data that does not violate data protection policies such as GDPR or HIPAA, thereby protecting customer information while providing high-quality test data that resembles live production data but is masked. Perforce Delphix helps prevent data loss and fines associated with data protection violations, improving the organization by ensuring compliance and facilitating quick access to quality data that saves time and costs during development and testing.

Perforce Delphix ensures that compliance requirements related to GDPR and other data protection policies are met by masking personal identifiable information such as names and addresses. As a result, the organization avoids hefty fines similar to what Facebook faced due to compliance issues.

The best feature in Perforce Delphix is virtualization, as it allows for a multitude of VDBs that do not consume physical space on your server. You can create multiple VDBs, distribute that data through PDBs to various testing teams for testing purposes, and provide the same dataset in different VDBs to development teams for their activities. Additionally, masking is another standout feature, enabling identification and scanning for PII, data profiling, and subsequently performing masking with customizable rules. The third notable feature is the ability to roll back data; if the deployed masked data malfunctions, you can revert to a previous version, correct any issues, and reload it.

An improvement for Perforce Delphix could be in subsetting, as it currently lacks variety in its subsetting rules. When retrieving data, it can be limited to specific time frames, without options for country or state specificity, which would be beneficial. Additionally, there is a need for features to facilitate synthetic data generation in testing environments.

Occasionally, issues arise with VDBs, which can become corrupted, making data retrieval impossible and possibly resulting in data loss. There should be a more robust mechanism for retrieving VDBs to mitigate the risk of crashing and potential data loss.

I have been using Perforce Delphix for the past five years.

In my experience, Perforce Delphix is very stable.

Perforce Delphix's scalability is good as it integrates well with current CI/CD pipelines and provides solutions for various applications, enabling the creation of pipelines that trigger jobs directly within Perforce Delphix for refreshes and other automation tasks.

Customer support from Perforce Delphix is excellent, as they are very helpful and provide timely solutions.

I previously used Broadcom TDM, which is a competitive test data management tool known for its excellent features in data masking, data subsetting, and synthetic data generation, surpassing Perforce Delphix in several areas except for virtualization.

There is a return on investment for Perforce Delphix, but I do not have specific metrics available to quantify savings in time, money, or manpower.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Perforce Delphix are substantial, making it unaffordable for small organizations and startups. It is mainly utilized by larger clients such as banking and healthcare providers capable of funding such an investment.

We evaluated options such as Informatica TDM  and Tonic tool, but their performance was inadequate for handling large datasets, leading us to choose Perforce Delphix.

The rollback feature is useful when you need to mask data from a specific period, and upon refreshing the data into the testing environment, if it becomes corrupted, effectively stopping progress. The rollback allows you to return to a previous version, rectify the problem, and refresh the data again, thereby saving significant time during testing as you can correct issues without lengthy delays.

My advice for those looking into using Perforce Delphix is to learn how to create different masking rules prior to using the tool, ensuring familiarity with the interface and a basic understanding of data administration. I give Perforce Delphix an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10.

My main use case for Perforce Delphix  was refreshing production databases.

The best features Perforce Delphix  offers are quick and easy production-like database management. Refreshing databases is easy and efficient. For example, before using Perforce Delphix, we exported and imported databases to refresh production databases for test cases, but after we implemented Perforce Delphix, we refreshed them more efficiently and quickly.

Refreshing UAT databases takes nearly five minutes with Perforce Delphix, but before that, we exported and imported them along with importing the schema. Perforce Delphix has positively impacted my organization as I saved considerable time.

I am not currently using Perforce Delphix, so I cannot comment on how it can be improved. I cannot recall any needed improvements from my past experience with Perforce Delphix. Since I have not used Perforce Delphix for nearly five or six years, I cannot add anything specifically about needed improvements.

I have been working in my current field for nearly 10 years.

Perforce Delphix is stable in my experience. After we tested it in our company, other companies tested it and implemented it to their production environment.

Perforce Delphix reduces storage, so it takes about five minutes to make a UAT test environment, and I did not notice any issues as our data or usage grew.

The customer support for Perforce Delphix, based on my experience, is initially not easy to reach, but in the succession stage, it is easy to reach support.

Perforce Delphix was the first program that we used for refreshing databases.

I used Perforce Delphix for nearly two or three years. I found it easy to use.

I used Perforce Delphix during my junior years, but I left it because I began working at another company.

I have not seen a return on investment from using Perforce Delphix, and I am not the one in charge of investment or licensing information.

I do not know the licensing information or setup cost for Perforce Delphix because I am not the one in charge of that.

I did not evaluate any other options before choosing Perforce Delphix.

My advice to others looking into using Perforce Delphix is that it reduces time, is easy to implement, and also reduces storage. I would give this product a rating of 9 out of 10.

My main use case for Perforce Delphix  is data anonymization of Workday . Workday  is a platform where the company's data is stored in different files containing personal details, health details, and other critical document information. For testing and development purposes, we use the lower environment. In the lower environment, we need the same sample of data, but an anonymized version. Perforce Delphix  helps us anonymize the data into a deterministic value, which we then use for testing and development purposes.

Perforce Delphix offers massive storage savings and useful algorithms as its best features. The tool uses real-time personal identifiable data, including national IDs and national ID algorithms, along with multiple types of algorithms for particular use cases.

I rely on the national ID feature most in Perforce Delphix. In Workday, we use different countries' national IDs, which have specific formats. Perforce Delphix has its own connectors to fetch data from the real-time environment, using that particular format to produce deterministic data. The national ID feature is very useful for me to anonymize national IDs.

Perforce Delphix offers email ID formats that can be produced in different variations depending on the vendor or the client. Beyond email IDs, hierarchy can be utilized along with different name formats, local languages, and various employee IDs. This flexibility is very valuable.

Perforce Delphix has positively impacted my organization by improving efficiency. The process that used to take almost 48 hours has been reduced by 40 hours due to Perforce Delphix, allowing us to complete our work in just eight hours. This reduces one full-time effort of an employee, allowing that person to focus on other areas. In terms of cost savings and improving efficiency, it helps significantly.

I believe the data generation part should be included in Perforce Delphix, as it would be helpful for other organizations as well. Data generation is the main improvement I feel Perforce Delphix can make. It would be beneficial if we could provide a format and Perforce Delphix could reply with hundreds or millions of records.

I have been using Perforce Delphix for four years.

Perforce Delphix is stable.

Perforce Delphix's scalability is impressive; it can handle low, medium, and large data sets smoothly.

The customer support for Perforce Delphix is excellent. For a P1 ticket, it gets resolved within two to four hours. For a medium ticket, it is resolved within six to eight hours, and for a P3 ticket, it takes about a day.

I evaluated TDM before choosing Perforce Delphix.

I have seen a return on investment, including money saved, efficiency gained, and fewer employees needed. Everyone can get involved to benefit from this tool.

I do not want to switch to any other tool. I am very likely to continue using Perforce Delphix.

Regarding Perforce Delphix's AI capabilities, the tool does not save any data into it. Perforce Delphix only saves the algorithms and is connected with the target and source systems, which are completely handled by the project team. There is no data storage in Perforce Delphix, ensuring data privacy is achieved.

The accuracy of Perforce Delphix's output is approximately 95%. When checking the output, I observe there are no duplicates, no synonyms, and no errors. The results match what we expected. The accuracy is correct.

My advice for others looking into using Perforce Delphix is that if your organization needs optimization and you have less skilled personnel who are aware of workflows, you can definitely go for Perforce Delphix. The UI is very user-friendly, enabling you to leverage this tool. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.