Redact Mask

The Redact mask replaces characters with a redaction character.

You can specify full or partial masking of the field.

By default, the Redact mask shall replace all alphanumeric characters ('A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '0'..'9') with the character 'X' and preserve all other characters - as shown in the default Redact mask panel above.

For example, the value '1234-5678-9012-3456' would be replaced with 'XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX'.

If you want to mask all characters (and not just alphanumerics) then ensure that the 'Non-Alphanumeric characters' checkbox is selected. In this case, the value '1234-5678-9012-3456' would be replaced with 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'.

Also consider the Randomize Mask, particularly if you require that unique original values remain unique after they are masked.

Non-English Characters

This mask will mask Unicode text and you can specify any Unicode character as the replacement character.

Please note that the term 'Alphabetic' in this mask refers only for recognizing and filtering characters in the English alphabet.

If you wish to mask non-English characters then you must select the Redact 'Non-Alphanumeric characters' checkbox. Similarly, if you are using the Partial Masking options then you should use the 'All' unit (instead of the 'Alphabetic' or 'AlphaNumeric' units.)

Masking Range

This panel allows you to specify a partial range of an original value to be selected for masking. The default, as shown in the mask above, shall select the entire value.
  

Select Range

This defines what part of each value shall be selected for masking (subject further to the First and Last parameters below). Everything outside of this range shall be preserved.

Entire Field - The entire value is selected.

Before Substring - Only that part of the value from the appears before the specified substring in the value shall be selected for masking. The substring and remainder of the value shall be preserved.

After Substring - Only that part of the value from the appears after the specified substring in the value shall be selected for masking. The substring and part of the value that appears before the substring shall be preserved.

Substring

The substring that shall be considered the delimiter of the masking range.

Every character in this field is significant including quotes and spaces. Therefore, unless you want to search the field for a quotes and spaces do not include them in this field.
 

Preserve or Mask:

If Preserve is selected from the combo box then the First and Last parameters shall describe how many characters from the original value shall be preserved in the masked value.

If Mask is selected from the combo box then the First and Last parameters shall describe how many characters in the original value shall be masked. All other characters shall be preserved.

First

This specifies how many of the first count of characters of the specified character unit shall be masked or preserved.

The character unit combo box offers the selection:

All                    - Every character is counted, including non-alphanumerics. ie. This yields a fixed offset.
 Alphabetic        - Only alphabetic characters are counted ('A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')
 Numeric           - Only numeric characters are counted
 AlphaNumeric   - Only alphanumeric characters are counted

Last

This specifies how many of the last count of characters of the specified character unit shall be masked or preserved.

Determinism

The Redact mask is always deterministic and cannot be changed. Therefore there is no Determinism tab for this mask.

Examples

Example: Mask the last 4 digits of phone numbers with zeroes.

Since we're only replacing the last 4 digits this has the benefit of preserving not only any formatting of original values but also any other general but significant information such as country codes and area codes; however, you should consider whether this is sufficiently anonymous for your purposes. Note: Generally speaking, the Randomize Mask is better suited for masking telephone numbers because it has the capability to generate distinct masked values for distinct original values (rather than generating duplicates as would likely happen if the last 4 digits of all telephone numbers were set to '0000')

Sample before and after values:

Example: Mask the first 6 characters with '*'.
  

Sample before and after values:

Example: Preserve only the first 2 alphabetic characters and the last 3 digits while masking all other alphanumeric characters using the '@' character (preserving all non-alphanumeric characters).
   

 Sample before and after values:

Example: Mask all alphanumeric characters after the second hyphen ("-") from the right with 'X' except that within this range preserve the first 2 alpha characters.
   

Sample before and after values:

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