DataMasque Data Masking + Synthetic Data
Masked finance data has enabled compliant AI modeling and now needs better UX and virtualization
What is our primary use case?
I am using DataMasque to explore how we can develop and optimize our old data infrastructure, and we set up Microsoft Fabric. My main use case for DataMasque at the moment is its enterprise data masking and test data management solution, designed for anonymizing sensitive information. We work on our finance data and some sensitive pilot data and how it is performing. Working on that keeps the data very confidential and also complies with GDPR and HIPAA.
A specific example of how I am using DataMasque with our finance and sensitive pilot data is that we ingested the raw data which was more confidential and a kind of test data. When we processed and did the ELT approach with all the compliance requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA applied, it actually worked well and we can use that data because it makes the schema design exposed. This allowed us to work on and train our AI models. It has benefits including referential and cross-system integrity, configuration as code integrations, which is very helpful, and it also abides with data privacy compliance. The licensing part is perpetual licensing, so it is never a situation where a large bill is coming up.
Regarding how DataMasque is fitting into my current projects, I find that the configuration as code integration is very amazing. The masking is defined with a YAML file and managed directly in the Git side, allowing development teams to integrate masking seamlessly using CI/CD jobs. More of the data privacy compliance also helps for abiding by our data on HIPAA and GDPR compliance.
How has it helped my organization?
DataMasque has positively impacted my organization by ensuring that the data is getting secured, it is getting compliant, and the overhead cost has been reduced as we were using Fabric before. The resulting data set always remains mathematically and structurally valid. These are two things that demonstrate it is working in our organization, though it is currently a pilot project.
Regarding the overhead cost reduction, we evaluated the overhead cost comparison before. As we are Fabric partners, we see that DataMasque uses a deployment-based and consumption-based pricing model available in the cloud marketplace. It processes runs entirely within the private cloud on-premises infrastructure with unlimited role runs. It avoids punitive per gigabyte or per record cost scaling. Legacy alternatives such as Delphix and Informatica often feature heavy, complex license fees coupled with massive infrastructure overhead, leading to significantly higher total cost of ownership. DataMasque helps us to virtualize hardware or large computer clusters as well. Custom scripts may feel straightforward initially but carry hidden operational drag due to continuous engineering hours spent fixing scripts, large schemas, and compute and storage efficiency issues.
What is most valuable?
The best features DataMasque offers really stand out. Starting with the fact that when the pipeline structure is captured, that feature is really nice. Customer names, emails, and all of the sensitive data are getting preserved because it masks the data and works on all the compliance requirements that we set up. The resulting data set always remains mathematically and structurally valid, which is really amazing.
The pipeline add-on feature helps my team by fitting into our workflow for the developers who set up an ELT setup we have for DataMasque as well. The main part is about confidentiality. In Fabric, we used to set up RLS and other security compliance, but in DataMasque, we have our own tool which keeps it safe. It is good for our data engineers to work on that.
Regarding the features and collaboration, as it sets up with Git, we easily get the configuration as code and masking rules. It provides a very collaborative approach with other software as well, so it is helping us to keep the data compliant.
What needs improvement?
DataMasque can be improved by focusing on having a virtualization setup. Unlike heavy enterprise alternatives such as Delphix, DataMasque handles static masking but does not offer built-in data virtualization, thin provisioning, or rapid dynamic data masking, which is a disadvantage for us. Another area for improvement is the single instance development, as it lacks a distributed or native scale-out engine for massive multi-terabyte clusters, which can limit raw performance compared to distributed systems. If DataMasque works on this, it would be really great, provided that the cost does not increase significantly. The GUI and UX complexity can be made more simple and intuitive for non-technical users.
I would add more about needed improvements by introducing native self-service portals because it actually builds a robust, role-based UI layer that lets developers, stakeholders, business analysts, or QA leads to request and spin up masked data securely without relying entirely on engineering writing of YAML rule sets. Expanding distributed performance scaling by implementing native parallel partitioning or scale-out execution runners to reduce processing times for ultra-large enterprise databases would be a game-changer for DataMasque. Enhanced out-of-the-box synthetic generators for advanced template-driven synthetic data generation for edge case scenarios where production data is sparse would also be beneficial. These three improvements would help DataMasque grow and prosper in the IT field.
Regarding DataMasque's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security yet need to be included.
For how long have I used the solution?
In my organization, I have been using DataMasque as a recent addition that is currently in pilot stage.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, DataMasque is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
DataMasque's scalability is going well, but as it is a pilot project, we will not be able to draw conclusions yet.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support team is quite helpful. When we were trying to set up, they helped us in a very supportive and collaborative way. I would rate the customer support as nine out of ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Microsoft Fabric before DataMasque and switched because of the costing overhead.
What was our ROI?
We have seen the early signs of return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was more of an on-the-go kind of thing. It was quite simple, though I was involved in the detail part.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing DataMasque, I evaluated other options such as Microsoft Fabric. We started working on that and then switched to DataMasque. We are still in a pilot stage and exploring other options as well.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate DataMasque overall as seven out of ten. I gave it a seven because there are a few points that need improvement. As I mentioned, three points that need focus are the non-virtualization part, the single instance limits, and the UI/UX complexity. If I were to rate it a ten, I would cut three points for these areas.
Regarding DataMasque's AI capabilities, I think its accuracy and reliability of output is great.
DataMasque is deployed in my organization primarily as a containerized application, meaning it is a cloud-agnostic approach. It will be more on the Microsoft Azure side. Currently, it is deployed on Microsoft Azure.
My advice to others reading reviews on PeerSpot looking into using DataMasque is to be open and supportive of the project because it is still in early stage. The CI/CD alignment should be done properly. The drawbacks of the UI/UX friction are there. Edge case validation hurdles are one of the things that might cause issues. Be flexible and supportive regarding DataMasque software.
Automated data masking has uncovered hidden compliance risks and now supports self-service restores
What is our primary use case?
I use Datamasque for data compliance, profiling, and masking.
How has it helped my organization?
I was able to profile all 400+ databases in our environment, identify compliance data that was not known or identified previously, and provide the teams with a self-service option to restore to lower environments. I have also allowed our Security and Compliance team access to assist with audits.
What is most valuable?
Datamasque offers ease of use, lower cost than competitors, and the ability to scan both structured and unstructured data. The development teams are willing to work with the customer and make improvements.
What needs improvement?
Datamasque is always improving with each release. They listen to their customers and are quick to implement enhancement requests or bug fixes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Datamasque for 1 year.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Delphix.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Datamasque has the majority of the same features for a much lower cost in terms of both licensing and infrastructure.
Masking sensitive test data has improved compliance and now enables safe, realistic debugging
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for DataMasque is masking PHI data to use in a staging environment for production testing.
I decided to start masking PHI data specifically for staging due to a compliance requirement and to have better end-to-end testing with real production loads.
What is most valuable?
The best features DataMasque offers that stand out to me are the flexibility to create rule sets and mask UUIDs, which have been really beneficial. Additionally, their customer service and technical support have been very helpful in getting this set up.
The flexibility in creating rule sets has helped my team specifically because we have lots of dependencies on different databases and different database types. We have an RDS instance and an OpenSearch instance. Having those rule sets really allowed us to connect data between the two because the same data can be across multiple datasets. Creating these rules enabled us to not think too much about which ones need to be unique or which ones need to be the same across different tables. Whenever we run into issues or questions, we are able to talk to the DataMasque team, and they give us a reasonable technical response within a good timeframe that allows us to solve our issues pretty quickly. We have not had huge delays or blockers because of the communication between us and DataMasque.
I appreciate the consistency to continue to improve the application, and there are new features coming out this year that will be tools we use. DataMasque is doing a great job of adding new features, and we will definitely be using them in the future.
DataMasque has positively impacted our organization by already showing visible benefits in security and reduced risks for compliance, even though we are still in the process of setting up production and using it to the full extent. It will allow our developers to troubleshoot issues easily without the risk of viewing PHI or anything similar. We are seeing the benefits already of that, but we still need to complete the full integration and incorporate it into our workflows to see the full benefits, which we are currently in the process of. So far, it has been really good.
By just masking production data, we can go into this masked database set to understand edge cases and issues as they come up from support without the developers having to look at any production data. They can go into this masked dataset and see the problem firsthand, something we would not have caught with our dev dataset because it is such a smaller amount of data, whereas production has a vast amount of data that we can look through.
What needs improvement?
It is too early to tell how DataMasque can be improved since we are still in the implementation phase. We do like everything that the company offers, and they perform check-ins monthly to see if we have any issues. Right now there is not anything we would like to improve.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using DataMasque for about eight months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
DataMasque is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
DataMasque's scalability is pretty good; we have not had any issues, and we have a pretty large dataset that it has handled well.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support from DataMasque is excellent.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution.
How was the initial setup?
It was quite easy to deploy DataMasque in my environment.
My experience with the configuration process was good; it was a smooth process with no issues.
What was our ROI?
We have not seen a return on investment yet, but we expect to save money on testing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the procurement process was easy.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was easy. They gave us a trial license that we used, and when it expired, they extended it for us so we could finish our implementation and testing. The contracting was done with our CTO, and he signed off on it, so that part seemed to be a smooth transaction because everything was done through AWS, with no issues at all.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing DataMasque, as we had a referral to DataMasque.
What other advice do I have?
I suggest trying DataMasque out and seeing how it fits your needs. Ask questions because DataMasque is great at responding to questions and making sure it fits your requirements. I give DataMasque a rating of five out of five.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Creating realistic staging data has improved testing quality and supports flexible masking rules
What is our primary use case?
I created a staging environment with production-like data.
How has it helped my organization?
We can now have a staging environment very much like a production environment, which improves our testing and product quality.
What is most valuable?
The auto-generation of masking rules, integration with Git, support for supplementary masking files, the ability to run raw SQL, and partition support all make it easier to create and maintain a masking configuration. Additionally, worker settings are needed as they help improve performance.
What needs improvement?
UUID generation could be improved. Although UUIDs were masked correctly, some validation rules were not supported, requiring a switch from validators to pattern matching. Expanding native UUID validation support would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used the solution for about 3-4 months.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is my first time using a masking tool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
As we are still in the early stages, I can't say anything definitive about pricing yet, but I believe it will be usage-based, which should work well.
What other advice do I have?
Thank you for the product and the great support throughout this journey. The team has been responsive and helpful, and it has been a positive experience overall.
Data masking has improved QA testing coverage and protects all discovered sensitive fields
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The testing scenarios are more complete.
What is most valuable?
Being able to generate the masking rules directly from the tool based on what it finds during the data discovery helps ensure that all sensitive fields are identified and masked.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used the solution for one year.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is the first time I am using this tool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The DM team was very happy to work with us when we were determining the pricing and licensing model we wanted to use.
What other advice do I have?
The tech support is top notch!