- IT HIDES SENSITIVE DATA
Tokenization hides data. Sometimes data must be hidden in order to satisfy compliance requirements
and customers’ expectations for data privacy. A form of data protection, tokenization conceals sensitive
data elements so should an organization’s data be breached, the visible tokenized data—essentially a
replacement for the valuable data—means nothing. A hacker will only see characters that are meaningless.
- A TOKEN SETS DATA FREE Tokenization protects data as it travels between applications, devices, and servers, whether in the cloud or on-premises—as well as wherever it is in the world. In its most basic form, tokenization simply substitutes a randomly generated value, a “token,” for a cleartext value. A lookup table, or token vault, is kept in a secure place, to map the cleartext value to the corresponding token. A digital token is the key to reclaiming this valuable data. As soon as a user with authorization needs to access the sensitive data elements, a token affixed to that data is used to reveal it, much as a coat-check ticket enables people to retrieve valuables they store for a bit at restaurants and hotels.