Logic, Revelation And Authority - 864 Words

The three commonplace ways of knowing that was talked about in the article were logic, revelation and authority. Logic is one of the more useful ways of knowing because it deals with true or false. However, logic can be very misleading. The article gave the example of empirical logic that said,† All cows are brown. Bossy is not brown. Therefore Bossy is not a cow.† like the article says this is not logical because cows can be different colors. When it comes to me though, I believe that logic is the best way of knowing for quick thinking because making a logical choice is often the correct one in everyday life. Another way of knowing the article talks about revelation. The article defines this as a statement that comes from a source that is unquestionable. I think that a lot of people in America use this way of knowing to try and understand government. Like when the supreme court decided that black people freed or enslaved could not be U.S. citizens in the Dred Scott v. St anford, some of the country thought this to be the way it is because the statement came from the Supreme Court that is what some think an unquestionable source. The next way of thinking that the article talks about is authority. The authority way of thinking has to do with authority figures really. I guess my last example would work here too because the people see the Supreme Court as an established authority, but I didn’t want use it here because people fight supreme court cases. The Civil War was foughtShow MoreRelatedInterpretation By Summarizing. To Summarize Is To State1463 Words   |  6 PagesKen’s reasoning is based on divine revelation. That is, God reveals that Jesus Christ is the Truth. God reveals that God’s revelation is truth. God reveals this to Ken. Nothing can be claimed about ancient history or spiritual things without either assumption or revelation from God. Secular science always requires assumptions. Secularists even rely on assumptions fo r basics like the following: †¢ The laws on nature †¢ The regularity of nature †¢ The validity of logic and reason †¢ The validity of mathRead MoreWhy Be Moral : A Short Discussion Of Ethical Motivation1697 Words   |  7 PagesReddit Share this article on Pinterest Expert Author David Mascone Almost by nature, we feel the pull of ethical considerations. If we see someone drop a dollar, most of us run forward and return the dollar to the owner. But why not keep it? What logic or rationale supports our being concerned about the ethics of an action? Why not just follow our self-interest? Why not just keep the dollar and consider ourselves to be lucky. So let s dive into the question. Even though we likely judge being moralRead MoreThe Satanic Verses And Hey Nostradamus969 Words   |  4 Pageshypocrisy and challenging what is deemed sacred, The Satanic Verses and Hey Nostradamus! uncover the darkness within religion, illustrating possible impurity in religious authority and legitimacy. Peter Mullen points out that religious texts have ‘a definitive authority for the communities which accept and uphold them’. Such authority is engaged with and questioned, allowing dissent from the imposed sacred. In The Satanic Verses, the sacred is made up, religion and the name of God constructed to makeRead MoreEssay on Definition of Knowledge1036 Words   |  5 Pagesexperiences, word of mouth, logic, faith and many other things everyday of their life to determine whether something is truthful or not. Before continuing, it is important that it is stated that nothing should be taken for truth simply because it is written by any particular person. The statements in this text are no exception. This text, along with other statements, should be judged only by whether they are consistent with evidence or logic. Even if there are many examplesRead MoreThe Roman Catholic Church Responded Treatment1645 Words   |  7 Pagesanswer to the Protestant uprisings, the Jesuits helped. They started by Ignatius de Loyola in 1534, they were very militaristic with self-discipline and obedience to the Church. Good Catholics were to deny themselves and submit to the higher Church authority, combined with the traditional spirituality and mysticism of the Church. The Council of Trent 1545-1563, made almost entirely of Italy’s and presided by the Pope. The changes made were the ban of selling indulgences, made bishops live in their dioceseRead MoreEthics and Worldviews1417 Words   |  6 PagesHis personal goodness, absolute holiness, and perfect love is manifested in human form through His Son, Jesus Christ, the model of morality for all humanity. God also reveals His laws and moral principles through Scripture and special and general revelation. Because of God’s pure goodness and love, though, He is limited by His character and cannot force humans to do what He wants. That freedom given to humanity led to their fallen state and subsequent flawed sense of morality, but even today, humansRead MoreThe Role Of Divine Revelation On The Human Thought Process Or A Basic Heart Commitment1209 Words   |  5 PagesPre-suppositional is a belief that precedes all other beliefs or the most fundamental commitment of the heart. By this meaning, this indicates the role that divine revelation should play in the human thought process or a basic heart commitment. For the Christian that commitment is God as he is revealed in his word. While ones their ultimate commitment they cannot believe anything that conflicts with that commitment. For the unbeliever, to presuppose God in this perspective is for him to think, sayRead More Horror and Self-punishment in Sophocles Oedipus Rex850 Words   |  4 Pagesthrough the duration of its performance. The opening of the play presents us with a gathering, the old and the young, no women, no fully adult males, so that Oedipus is, at once, magnified and isolated. His calm authority is overwhelming and majestic. But on what does Oedipus authority rest? There is a crucial uncertainty here. The opening scenes present us with an image of Oedipus as a political figure, a human king whose power derives from the community he rules, whose perceptions and whose feelingsRead MoreFalse Doctrine And Its Effect On The Church1612 Words   |  7 Pagesexistence. They also believe that everything, in all areas of Christianity, is centered around Israel, the Jews, and the idea of a physical Davidic kingdom. According to Wikipedia, premillennialism is largely based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation 20 in the New Testament which describes Christ’s coming to the earth and subsequent reign at the end of an apocalyptic period of tribulation. They also use many other texts, such as Mat thew 24, to prove their beliefs. It is important to understandRead MoreEssay about Homosexuality1071 Words   |  5 Pagesmay be a New Testament scholar and thus draws out the intricacies of Romans 1:18-28 and the true meaning of the word â€Å"homosexual offender† (i.e. older man sleeping with a young boy) in that case. The other may be a biologist who appeals to natural logic and reproduction to defend sex as a behavior meant for heterosexuals. Both of them are right within their own expertise. But they cannot, then, debate, for it would be like Chuck pitching to a batter on another baseball field. I was pleasantly

Data Masking Free Essays

string(580) " Business Email Address W elfare Pension Insurance Number Custom Name Unemployment Insurance Number Employee Number Government Affiliation ID User Global Identifier Military Service ID Party Number or Customer Number Social Insurance Number Account Name Pension ID Number Mail Stop Article Number GPS Location Civil Identifier Number Student Exam Hall Ticket Number Credit Card Number Club Membership ID Social Security Number Library Card Number Trade Union Membership Number Oracle Data Masking provides several easy-to-use mechanisms for isolating the sensitive data elements\." An Oracle White Paper July 2010 Data Masking Best Practices Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Executive Overview †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 1 Introduction †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 1 The Challenges of Masking Data †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 2 Implementing Data Masking †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. We will write a custom essay sample on Data Masking or any similar topic only for you Order Now 2 Comprehensive Enterprise-wide Discovery of Sensitive Data †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. Enforcing Referential Relationships during Data Masking †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 4 Rich and Extensible Mask Library†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 6 Sophisticated Masking Techniques †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 7 High Performance Mask Execution †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 9 Integrated Testing with Application Quality Management solutions11 Oracle’s Comprehensive Solutions for Database Security †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 12 Customer Case Studies †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 2 Conclusion †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â ‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 13 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Executive Overview Enterprises need to share production data with various constituents while also protecting sensitive or personally identifiable aspects of the information. As the number of applications increases, more and more data gets shared, thus further increasing the risk of a data breach, where sensitive data gets exposed to unauthorized parties. Oracle Data Masking addresses this problem by irreversibly replacing the original sensitive data with realistic -looking scrubbed data that has same type and characteristics as the original sensitive data thus enabling organizations to share this information in compliance with information security policies and government regulations. This paper describes the best practices for deploying Oracle Data Masking to protect sensitive information in Oracle and other heterogeneous databases such as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQLServer. Introduction Enterprises share data from their production applications with other users for a variety of business purposes. Most organizations copy production data into test and development environments to allow application developers to test application upgrades. Retail c ompanies share customer point-of-sale data with market researchers to analyze customer buying patterns. Pharmaceutical or healthcare organizations share patient data with medical researchers to assess the efficacy of clinical trials or medical treatments. Numerous industry studies on data privacy have concluded that almost all companies copy tens of millions of sensitive customer and consumer records to non-production environments for testing, development, and other uses. Very few companies do anything to protect this data even when sharing with outsourcers and third parties. Almost 1 out of 4 companies responded that live data used for development or testing had been lost or stolen and 50% s aid they had no way of knowing if data in non-production environments had been compromised. 1 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices The Challenges of Masking Data Organizations have tried to address these issues with custom hand-crafted solutions or repurposed existing data manipulation tools within the enterprise to solve this problem of sharing sensitive information with non-production users. Take for example, the most common solution: database scripts. At first glance, an advantage of the database scripts approach would appear that they specifically address the unique privacy needs of a particular database that they were designed for. They may have even been tuned by the DBA to run at their fastest Let’s look at the issues with this approach. 1. Reusability: Because of the tight association between a script and the associated database, these scripts would have to re-written from scratch if applied to another database. There are no common capabilities in a script that can be easily leveraged across other databases. 2. Transparency: Since scripts tend to be monolithic programs, auditors have no transparency into the masking procedures used in the scripts. The auditors would find it extremely difficult to offer any recommendation on whether the masking process built into a script is secure and offers the enterprise the appropriate degree of protection. 3. Maintainability: When these enterprise applications are upgraded, new tables and columns containing sensitive data may be added as a part of the upgrade process. With a script-based approach, the entire script has to be revisited and updated to accommodate new tables and columns added as a part of an application patch or an upgrade. Implementing Data Masking Based on Oracle Data Masking , Oracle has developed a comprehensive 4-step approach to implementing data masking called Find, Assess, Secure, and Test (FAST). These steps are: ? Find: This phase involves identifying and cataloging sensitive or regulated data across the entire enterprise. Typically carried out by business or security analysts, the goal of this exercise is to come up with the comprehensive list of sensitive data elements specific to the organization and discover the associated tables and columns across enterprise databases that contain the sensitive data. ? Assess: In this phase, developers or DBAs in conjunction with business or security analysts identify the masking algorithms that represent the optimal techniques to replace the original sensitive data. Developers can leverage the existing masking library or extend it with their own masking routines. ? Secure: This and the next steps may be iterative. The security administrator executes the masking process to secure the sensitive data during masking trials. Once the masking process has completed and has been verified, the DBA then hands over the environment to the application testers. 2 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Test: In the final step, the production users execute application processes to test whether the resulting masked data can be turned over to the other non-production users. If the masking routines need to be tweaked further, the DBA restores the database to the pre-masked state, fixes the masking algorithms and re-executes the masking process. Comprehensive Enterprise-wide Discovery of Sensitive Data To begin the process of masking data, the data elements that need to be masked in the application must be identified. The first step that any organization must take is to determine what is sensitive. This is because sensitive data is related to specific to the government regulations and industry standards that govern how the data can used or shared. Thus, the first step is for the security administrator to publish what constitutes sensitive data and get agreement from the company’s compliance or risk officers. A typical list of sensitive data elements may include: Person Name Bank Account Number Maiden Name Card Number (Credit or Debit Card Number) Business Address Tax Registration Number or National Tax ID Business Telephone Number Person Identification Number Business Email Address W elfare Pension Insurance Number Custom Name Unemployment Insurance Number Employee Number Government Affiliation ID User Global Identifier Military Service ID Party Number or Customer Number Social Insurance Number Account Name Pension ID Number Mail Stop Article Number GPS Location Civil Identifier Number Student Exam Hall Ticket Number Credit Card Number Club Membership ID Social Security Number Library Card Number Trade Union Membership Number Oracle Data Masking provides several easy-to-use mechanisms for isolating the sensitive data elements. 3 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Data Model driven: Typical enterprise applications, such as E-Business Suite, Peoplesoft and Siebel, have published their application data model as a part of their product documentation or the support knowledge base. By leveraging the published data models, data masking users can easily associate the relevant tables and columns to the mask formats to create the mask definition. ? Application Masking Templates: Oracle Data Masking supports the concept of application masking templates, which are XML representations of the mask definition. Software vendors or service providers can generate these pre-defined templates and make them available to enterprises to enable them to import these templates into the Data Masking rapidly and thus, accelerate the data masking implementation process. ? Ad-hoc search: Oracle Data Masking has a robust search mechanism that allows users to search the database quickly based on ad hoc search patterns to identify tables and columns that represent sources of sensitive data. With all the database management capabilities, including the ability to query sample rows from the tables, built into Enterprise Manager, the Data Masking a can assist enterprise users rapidly construct the mask definition – the pre-requisite to mask the sensitive data. For deeper searches, Oracle provides the Oracle Data Finder tool during data masking implementation to search across enterprises based on data patterns, such as NNN-NN-NNNN for social security numbers or 16 or 15 digit sequences beginning with 3, 4 or 5 for credit card . numbers. Using the combination of schema and data patterns and augmenting them with published application meta data models, enterprises can now develop a comprehensive data privacy catalog that captures the sensitive data elements that exist across enterprise databases. To be clear, this is not a static list. This is a dynamic living catalog managed by security administrators that needs to be refreshed as business rules and government regulations change as well as when applications are upgraded and patched and new data elements containing sensitive data are now discovered. Enforcing Referential Relationships during Data Masking In today’s relational databases (RDBMS), data is stored in tables related by certain key columns , called primary key columns, which allows efficient storage of application data without have to duplicate data. For example, an EMPLOYEE_ID generated from a human capital management (HCM) application may be used in sales force automation (SFA) application tables using foreign key columns to keep track of sales reps and their accounts. When deploying a masking solution, business users are often concerned with referential integrity, the relationship between the primary key and the foreign key columns, in a database or across databases. 4 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices CUSTOMERS EMPLOYEES ? ? ? EMPLOYEE_ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME Database enforced Application enforced ? ? ? CUSTOMER_ID SALES_REP_ID COMPANY_NAME SHIPMENTS ? ? ? SHIPMENT_ID SHIPPING_CLERK_ID CARRIER Figure 1:The Importance of Referential Integrity Oracle Data Masking automatically identifies referential integrity as a part of the mask definition creation. This means that when a business user chooses to mask a key column such as EMPLOYEE_ID, the Oracle Data Masking discovers all the related foreign key relationships in the database and enforces the same mask format to the related foreign key columns. This guarantees that the relationships between the various applications tables are preserved while ensuring that privacyrelated elements are masked. In applications where referential integrity is enforced in the database, Oracle Data Masking allows these relationships to be registered as relate d columns in the mask definition, thereby applying the same masking rules as applied to the database-enforced foreign key columns. 5 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Figure 2: Automatic enforcement of referential Integrity Rich and Extensible Mask Library Oracle Data Masking provides a centralized library of out-of-the-box mask formats for common types of sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, national identifiers (social security number for US, national insurance number for UK). By leveraging the Format Library in Oracle Data Masking, enterprises can apply data privacy rules to sensitive data across enterprise-wide databases from a single source and thus, ensure consistent compliance with regulations. Enterprises can also extend this library with their own mask formats to meet their specific data privacy and application requirements. Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Figure 3: Rich and extensible Mask Format Library Oracle Data Masking also provides mask primitives, which serve as building blocks to allow the creation of nearly unlimited custom mask formats ranging from numeric, alphabetic or date/time based. Recognizing that the real-world masking needs require a high degree of flexibility, O racle Data Masking allows security administrators to create user-defined-masks. These user-defined masks, written in PL/SQL, let administrators create unique mask formats for sensitive data, e. g. enerating a unique email address from fictitious first and last names to allow business applications to send test notifications to fictitious email addresses. Sophisticated Masking Techniques Data masking is in general a trade-off between security and reproducibility. A test database that is identical to the production database is 100% in terms of reproducibility and 0% in terms of security because of the fact that it exposes the original data. Masking technique where data in sensitive columns is replaced with a single fixed value is 100% in terms of security and 0% in terms of reproducibility. When considering various masking techniques, it is important to consider this trade-off in mind when selecting the masking algorithms. Oracle Data Masking provides a variety of sophisticated masking techniques to meet application requirements while ensuring data privacy. These techniques ensure that applications continue to operate without errors after masking. For example, ? Condition-based masking: this technique makes it possible to apply different mask formats to the same data set depending on the rows that match the conditions. For example, applying different national identifier masks based on country of origin. ? Compound masking: this technique ensures that a set of related columns is masked as a group to ensure that the masked data across the related columns retain the same relationship, e. g. city, state, zip values need to be consistent after masking. 7 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Deterministic Masking Deterministic masking is an important masking technique that enterprises must consider when masking key data that is referenced across multiple applications. Take, for example, three applications: a human capital management application, a customer relationship management application and a sales data warehouse. There are some key fields such as EMPLOYEE ID referenced in all three applications and needs to be masked in the corresponding test systems: a employee identifier for each employee in the human resources management application, customer service representative identifiers, which may also be EMPLOYEE IDs, in the customer relationship management application and sales representative IDs, which may be EMPLOYEE IDs in the sales data warehouse. To ensure that data relationships are preserved across systems even as privacy-related elements are removed, deterministic masking techniques ensure that data gets masked consistently across the various systems. It is vital that deterministic masking techniques used produce the replacement masked value consistently and yet in a manner that the original data cannot be derived from the masked value. One way to think of these deterministic masking techniques is as a function that is applied on the original value to generate a unique value consistently that has the same format, type and characteristics as the original value, e. . a deterministic function f(x) where f(x1) will always produce y1 for a given value x1. In order for the deterministic masking to be applied successfully, it is important that the function f(x) not be reversible, i. e. the inverse function f-1(y1) should not produce x1 to ensure the security of the original sensitive data. Deterministic masking techniques can be used with mathematical entries, e. g. social security numbers or credit card numbers, as well as with text entries, e. g. , to generate names. For example, organizations may require that names always get masked to the same set of masked names to ensure consistency of data across runs. Testers may find it disruptive if the underlying data used for testing is changed by production refreshes and they could no longer locate certain types of employees or customer records that were examples for specific test cases. Thus, enterprises can use the deterministic masking functions provided by Oracle Data Masking to consistently generate the same replacement mask value for any type of sensitive data element. Deterministic masking becomes extremely critical when testing data feeds coming from external systems, such as employee expense data provided by credit card companies. In production environments, the feed containing real credit card numbers are processed by the accounts payable application containing employee’s matching credit card information and are used to reconcile employee expenses. In test systems, the employee credit card numbers have been obfuscated and can no longer be matched against the data in the flat files containing the employee’s real credit card number. To address this requirement, enterprises pre-load the flat file containing data using tools such as SQL*Loader, into standard tables, then mask the sensitive columns using deterministic masking provided by Oracle Data Masking and then extract the masked data back into flat file. Now, the application will be able to process the flat files correctly just as they would have been in Production systems. 8 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices High Performance Mask Execution Now that the mask definition is complete, the Oracle Data Masking can now execute the masking process to replace all the sensitive data. Oracle Enterprise Manager offers several options to clone the production database: ? Recover from backup: Using the Oracle Managed Backups functionality, Oracle Enterprise Manager can create a test database from an existing backup. ? Clone Live Database: Oracle Enterprise Manager can clone a live production data into any non production environment within a few clicks. The clone database capability also provides the option to create a clone image, which can then be used for other cloning operations. With the cloned (non-production) database now ready for masking, the Oracle Data Masking builds a work list of the tables and columns chosen for masking. Other tables that are not required to be masked are not touched. Further, the tables selected for masking are processed in the optimal order to ensure that only one pass is made at any time even if there are multiple columns from that table selected for masking. Typically, the tables with the primary keys get masked first, followed by the dependent tables containing foreign keys. Once the mask work list is ready, the Oracle Data Masking generates mapping tables for all the sensitive fields and their corresponding masked values. These are temporary tables that are created as a part of the masking process, which will be dropped once all data has been masked successfully. Using a highly efficient data bulk mechanism, Oracle Data Masking rapidly recreates the masked replacement table based on original tables and the mapping tables and restores all the related database elements, such as indexes, constraints, grants and triggers identical to the original table. Compare this with the typical data masking process, which usually involves performing table row updates. Because rows in a table are usually scattered all over the disk, the update process is extremely inefficient because the storage systems attempts to locate rows on data file stored on extremely large disk s. The bulk mechanism used by Oracle Data Masking lays down the new rows for the masked table in rapid succession on the disk. This enhanced efficiency makes the masked table available for users in a fraction of the time spent by an update-driven masking process. For large tables, Oracle Data Masking automatically invokes SQL parallelism to further speed up the masking process. Other performance enhancements include using the NOLOGGING option when recreating the table with the masked data. Typical database operations such as row inserts or updates generate redo logs, which are used by the database to capture changes made to files. These redo logs are completely unnecessary in a data masking operation since the non-production database is not running in a production environment, requiring continuous availability and recoverability. Using the NOLOGGING option, the Oracle Data Masking bypasses the logging mechanism to further accelerate the masking process efficiently and rapidly. 9 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices In internal tests run on a single-core Pentium 4 (Northwood) [D1] system with 5. 7G of memory, the following performance results with reported. Criteria Baseline Metric Column scalability 215 columns 100 tables of 60G 20 minutes Row scalability 100 million rows 6 columns 1 hour 20 minutes Figure 4: Oracle Data Masking Performance scalability tests As these results clearly indicate, Oracle Data Masking can handle significant volumes of sensitive data effortlessly both in terms of the number of sensitive columns as well as tables with large numbers of rows. Oracle Data Masking is also integrated with Oracle Provisioning and Patch Automation in Oracle Enterprise Manager to clone-and-mask via a single workflow. The secure high performance nature of Oracle Data Masking combined with the end-to-end workflow ensures that enterprise can provision test systems from production rapidly instead of days or weeks that it would with separate manual processes. Optimized for Oracle databases Oracle Data Masking leverages key capabilities in Oracle databases to enhance the overall manageability of the masking solution. Some of these include: ? Flashback: Administrators can optionally configure Oracle databases to enable flashback to a premasked state if they encounter problems with the masked data. ? PL/SQL: Unlike other solutions, Oracle Data Masking generates DBA-friendly PL/SQL that allows DBAs to tailor the masking process to their needs. This PL/SQL script can also be easily integrated into any cloning process. 0 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Support for heterogeneous databases Oracle Data Masking supports masking of sensitive data in heterogeneous databases such as IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQLServer through the use of Oracle Database Gateways. Figure 5: Data masking support for heterogeneous databases Integrated Testing with Application Quality Management solutions The final step of the masking process is to test t hat the application is performing successfully after the masking process has completed. Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Application Quality Management (AQM) solutions provide high quality testing for all tiers of the application stack. Thorough testing can help you identify application quality and performance issues prior to deployment. Testing is one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of successfully deploying an application, but it is also one of the most critical to the project’s success. Oracle Enterprise Manager’s AQM solutions provide a unique combination of test capabilities which enable you to: ? Test infrastructure changes: Real Application Testing is designed and optimized for testing database tier infrastructure changes using real application workloads captured in production to validate database performance in your test environment. 11 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Test application changes: Application Testing Suite helps you ensure application quality and performance with complete end-to-end application testing solutions that allow you to automate functional regression testing, execute load tests and manage the test process. Oracle’s Comprehensive Solutions for Database Security Oracle provides a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions to ensure data privacy, protect against insider threats, and enable regulatory compliance. With Oracle’s powerful privileged user and multifactor access control, data classification, transparent data encryption, auditing, monitoring, and data masking, customers can deploy reliable data security solutions that do not require any changes to existing applications, saving time and money. Customer Case Studies Customers have had a variety of business needs which drove their decision to adopt the Oracle Data Masking for their sensitive enterprise data. These benefits of using Oracle Data Masking were realized by a major global telecommunications products company that implemented the above methdology. Their database administrators (DBAs) had developed custom scripts to mask sensitive data in the test and development environments of their human resources (HR) application. As the company was growing and offering new services, their IT infrastructure was also growing thus placing an increased burden on their DBAs. By implementing Oracle Data Masking, the organization was able to use the role-based separation of duties to allow the HR analysts to define the security policies for masking sensitive data. The DBAs then automated the implementation of these masking policies when provisioning new test or development environments. Thus, the telecommunications company was able to allow business users to ensure compliance of their non-production environments while eliminating another manual task for the DBAs through automation. The need for data masking can come from internal compliance requirements. In the case of this UKbased government organization, the internal audit and compliance team had identified that the nonproduction copies of human resource management systems used for testing, development and reporting did not meet the established standards for privacy and confidentiality. In joint consultations with their IT service provider, the organization quickly identified the Oracle Data Masking as ideally suited to their business needs based on the fact that it was integrated with their day-to-day systems management operations provided by Oracle Enterprise Manager. Within a few weeks, the service provider deployed the mask definitions for their Oracle eBusiness Suite HR application and thereby rapidly brought the internal non-productions systems into compliance. There are organizations that have internally developed data masking solutions that have discovered that custom scripts ultimately have their limits and are not able to scale up as enterprise data sets increase in volume. This Middle East-based real estate company found that their data masking scripts were running for several hours and were slowing down as data volumes increased. Due to the stringent requirement to create production copies available for testing within rapid time-frames, the company evaluated the Oracle Data Masking among other commercial solutions. Upon deploying the Oracle 12 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Data Masking, they discovered that they were able to accelerate the masking time from 6 hours using their old scripts to 6 minutes using the Oracle Data Masking, an improvement of 60x in performance. Conclusion Staying compliant with policy and government regulations while sharing production data with nonproduction users has become a critical business imperative for all enterprises. Oracle Data Masking is designed and optimized for today’s high volume enterprise applications running on Oracle databases. Leveraging the power of Oracle Enterprise Manger to manage all enterprise databases and systems, Oracle Data Masking accelerates sensitive data identification and executes the masking process with a simple easy-to-use web interface that puts the power of masking in the hands of business users and administrators. Organizations that have implemented Oracle Data Masking to protect sensitive data in test and development environment have realized significant benefits in the following areas: ? Reducing Risk through Compliance: By protecting sensitive information when sharing production data with developers and testers, organizations have able to ensure that non -production databases have remained compliant with IT security policies while enabling developers to conduct production-class testing. ? Increasing Productivity through Automation: By automating the masking process, organizations have been able to reduce the burden on DBAs who previously had to maintain manuallydeveloped masking scripts. 13 Data Masking Best Practices July 2010 Copyright  © 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved . This document is provided for information purposes only and the Author: Jagan R. Athreya contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error -free, nor subject to any other Contributing Authors: arranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are Oracle Corporation formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by a ny W orld Headquarters means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective U. S. A. owners. W orldwide Inquiries: AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. 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Specific Performance Issue

Question: You are required to identify one specific performance management issue and one compensation management issue in your organisation or an organisation that you are familiar with. Answer: In the present market of immense competitive business and aim on the popularity, the performance management and the compensation management have become really necessary. Every profitable or non-profit organization uses these management concepts as standardized tools in order to evaluate the performance of the employees, define their job roles, and offer them adequate financial or non-financial compensations. A business organization can only become successful if its employees efficiently contribute to the objective of the organization. But the performance of the employees should be evaluated at regular intervals so that the work process meets up with the organizational strategy. It also helps an organization to determine the structure of the remuneration for its employees. But these management concepts face a heavy challenge under some specific circumstances and due to the inability to meet the requirement what it was originally implemented for and this has become a global phenomenon (Armstrong and Brown, 1998). Recent studies show that the employers themselves think that both the performance management and the compensation systems are not efficient and complete enough to meet the organizational objectives and satisfy the employees (Bourne et al., 2013). The employees also have expressed their dissatisfaction and disgust about these systems. In light of such complicated situation, this paper attempts to critically discuss the issues found in the performance management and compensation management systems of the Little Heart Agency (LHA), a non-profit organization based in Porirua, New Zealand. Through critical and evaluative discussion, this paper also tries to present some potential and probable solutions so that the situation becomes simple and the organizational objective is perfectly met. Overview of the Organization The Little Heart Agency is an active non-profit organization which operates from the Porirua city of New Zealand. It has its offices and branches spread all over the New Zealand. This company is efficiently headed and controlled by Jack Fraser. LHA is mainly associated with children welfare. But, they provide ample support to the needy families too. These children either suffer from acute illness or from economic deprivation. The Board of the Directors of this organization includes several community leaders. It makes the organization accessible to all. Moreover, it also helps the organization itself to convey its message to the whole community. LHA arranges special programs, health check up and treatment camps, food supply camps etc in the distant areas. The employees have to work hard and sincerely to raise funds for the children through contacting several government agencies and charitable trusts. Therefore, the employees should be compensated adequately for their hard work. But th e compensation is generally made effective through a particular compensation management system. But before that, the performance of every employee should be evaluated by a standardized performance management technique so that the employers can determine the compensation structure for each post or individual employees. The LHA has implemented the Job Ranking method as the standardized tool of the performance management. The compensation is determined in accordance with the evaluation. The employees of the LHA are compensated through a compensation system of salary depending on the pay band structure. But these management systems have presented a number of difficulties to the employers and the employees also. Therefore, it is relevant to critically analyze the related performance management and compensation management concepts so that the issues can be properly addressed and solutions can be found out. The Concept of Performance Management The performance management helps an organization to establish a proper understanding of the workforce and the desired achievement with the help of that workforce. This process has various parts. Performance Planning Performance planning is the primary and fundamental step of performance management. This formal process helps an organization to identify, discuss, and then develop proper plans to set both organizational and individual goals within the company structure (Bhattacharya, 2011). It clearly demonstrates the desired level of achievement by the employees in the upcoming period of performance appraisal. This step is necessary because, at the end, the fixed goals and objectives serve as the standards for assessing and evaluating the performance of the employees as well as the improvement of the organization. Performance Monitoring This monitoring process is usually supervised by the managers. The focus is invested on the achieved results, and how the individual and group behavior of the employees contribute to the work environment (Bacal, 2012). The monitoring process should also concentrate on continuous tracking of the objectives through regular meetings with the employees, identifying barriers to the achievement of the objectives, sharing feedback on the achievements of the employees, keeping the employees aware of any required changes in the objectives in accordance with the shifting environment, and determining any extra support that may be required for enhancing the performance of the workforce. Performance Development This stage focuses on the development of the skills of the employees and the managers so that their professional excellence are enhanced. It includes a discussion with the managers, exchanging opinions and ideas among the individuals, promote individual growth, and allow the employees to adopt new skills and thoughts in accordance with the organizational objectives (Delpo and Guerin, 2014). Performance Evaluation The evaluation process helps to summarize the accomplishments of the employees both on the individual level and on a wholesome organizational level so that the organization becomes able to find out the key results and the shortcomings in accordance with the organizational objectives set at the first level (Sandler and Keefe, 2004). This process also helps to find out the challenges for the workforce and identifies the areas that need development. Succession Planning Succession planning is an important step in the performance management system. Through this particular step, the organizations recruit suitable and fit employees, managers, and other superior employees according to the defined job roles. The Concept of Compensation Management Compensation management is an important aspect of the organizational structure. The organizations use different kinds of compensation policies, incentive opportunities, extra credits and facilities, insurance facilities, and many other benefits within the compensation management program so that the employees remain motivated to work harder and better (Milkovich, Newman, Venkataratnam, 2009). An effective compensation management system helps to retain the valuable employees and attract the other professionals in the market. It provides the organization with a kind of competitive advantage. Issues of the Performance Management and Compensation Management Systems It is theoretically and practically considered that the performance management system has a close relationship with the compensation management system. It is also observed that it is the performance management strategy that leads to unequal compensation management technique. LHA uses a particular performance evaluation technique named job ranking. In this method, each job role and the employee performance related to each job role are compared with the other job roles of the organization. It allows the organization to rank all the jobs according to their importance in the organization in the form of highest to lowest, and hardest to easiest (Armstrong, 2005). This ranking should be done according to the responsibility, expectation, and duty of each specific job role. But such evaluation technique is the subject of controversial discussion. The people think that the technique does not separate the efficient employee from the inefficient ones. For example, one can observe that inside an organization, there are a number of people who work as the clerks but very few of them take their responsibilities seriously and sincerely. The same is the case in LHA. There are a number of employees who work in the same job role but the evaluation technique ultimately does not distinguish between the effective employees and the useless ones. Performance management is meant for encouraging and motivating the employees to keep doing the better work. But such incomplete evaluation discourages the employees instead of motivating them. The employees have to be attributed with specific job roles but at the same time, it should also distinguish between the worthy and the less-active employees and the inability to do this separation is often reflected through the compensation management system (Chong and Eggleton, 2007). The employees of the LHA are compensated according to the pay bands specified for their job roles. In this compensation structure, the more active and worthy employees r eceive the same amount of compensation as those who hardly work actively to fulfill the organizational goals. It creates a negative impact on the attitude and the thought process of the employees. The more active employees start to think that there is no meaning of working hard because the organization does not provide any additional benefits to the hard-working individuals. Moreover, the compensation system is incomplete in another way. The employees of LHA often have to travel to distant parts of New Zealand. They might face accidents or other types of physical hazards during their travel for the purpose of work. But the organization does not offer any travel bonus or insurance to the employees. There are not any kind of incentives for better performance. The experts suggest that an extra credit for the better performance would encourage the employees to repeat the same actions to receive the bonus again (Ryckman, 1986). It has also been recommended that the employees should be co mpensated with some bonus after the evaluation of the employee performance over a specific period of time (Keenan, 1994). This bonus should be provided on the discretionary basis. It would make the employees feel that the organization thinks about its employees and thus, the employees would feel more responsible for achieving the organizational objective (Widener, 2006). In order to have a better understanding, one should critically discuss the issues specifically related to the performance management and the compensation management systems. Static Business Objectives In the modern scenario of business, the organizations should continuously remodel their thought processes, values, and objectives in accordance with the change of the time (Panda, 2011). It has been observed that the LHA sets its goals and objectives during the performance planning stage at the start of a business session. But the organization does not develop or change the goals even if the business market witnesses a radical change. Thus, the whole performance management system loses its validity and credibility. The employees are evaluated on the standards of the outdated and irrelevant organizational objectives. Extreme Time-Consumption during Performance Feedback The LHA reviews the performance of the employees on the annual basis. But the performance evaluation step happens to be so lengthy that the employees receive the feedback months later. For example, if an employee does any mistake, he can get the feedback 6 or 7 months later. It does not help the organization or the employee. Extra and extreme time consumption mean that the employees would not receive the feedback in time and it increases the possibility that they would repeat the same mistakes during that period of time (Banker et al., 2000). Insufficient Focus on the Personal Development Each employee has his/her own credentials and abilities. Therefore, the managers should focus on the individual abilities so that the personal development of the individuals can collectively contribute to the organizational progress (Hale, 2012). But LHA only provides general feedbacks and suggestions to its employees. Thus, the employees also seem to be disinterested in the collective development because of their personal development gets neglected by the organization (Melnyk et al., 2014). Moreover, such performance management system neglects the unique contributions made by the employees. The final rankings are based on some generalized views. It discourages the employees to a great extent. Absence of Internal Equity This issue is related to both the performance and the compensation management systems. As the performance evaluation is based on some generalized notions, the Job Ranking method seems to be inadequate. This is because equity does not only mean that every person should get equal opportunities, but it also means that an employee with a better performance should receive better compensation than any other employee of the same job role (Pearce, Stevenson, and Perry, 1985). But this system is absent in the LHA. The better performers feel betrayed because every employee receives their salaries based on the pay band structure irrespective of their performance quality. 5.5. Absence of Adequate Extra Benefits Experts opine that the success of an organization largely depends on the tactics and strategies an organization adopts in order to attract the efficient newcomers, experienced professionals, and to retain the existing employees who are regarded as the valuable assets of the organization (Berger Berger, 2015). But this cannot be done until an organization provides some extra benefits to the employees. The LHA hugely fails to attract new professionals and retain the existing ones because the organization does not provide adequate performance incentive, business travel bonus, attractive joining allowance or retaining allowance. Inadequate Response to the External Competition In the present scenario of the business market, an organization should cope up with the tactics and strategies that best suit the time. But LHA does not respond to the competitive market in an efficient way. The companies have to reanalyze and re-evaluate their compensation structures by following the most suitable trend and implementing the appropriate compensation structure so that they can have an advantage (Brown, 2001). But LHA does not have such strategy and they stick to the fundamental tactics in the rapidly changing scenario. There are multiple issues that need to be assessed and properly addressed in order to survive in this extremely competitive market and establish LHA as a recognized institution. Recommendations The research and the discussion have brought out a number of shortcomings in the implemented performance management and compensation management system within the organizational structure of LHA. Therefore, the organization should immediately take the necessary steps in order to solve any potential problem or threat. Extensive studies and research recommend the following steps to the LHA: I) The LHA should set flexible objectives that can change its shape with the change of the dynamics in the business market. This would help the organization to continuously update the tactics and keep itself updated. II) The managers should more frequently communicate with the employees so that the performance feedback can be provided in time and the employees get an opportunity to develop their personal abilities. III) The compensation structure should use the Points Rating technique instead of the Job Ranking method. The Point Ranking method allows the evaluator to allocate points to each job role according to specific factors like responsibility, required skill, employee's knowledge, produced effort, and difficulty level of the job (Armstrong and Murlis, 2007). Thus, this method will ensure that the employees of LHA are compensated according to their credentials and abilities. It will maintain the internal equity within the organization. IV) The LHA should also reassess their business strategies and compensation techniques so that they can meet the requirements of the competitive market. The organization should also provide some extra benefits and facilities to attract new professionals or retain the existing ones. Conclusion The research has made it clear that LHA has to implement various new and updated policies to improve its organizational structure on a wholesome level. The performance management system has a lot of issues that makes it ineffective. The same is the fact in the case of the compensation management. They fail to properly set the objectives, focus on the development of the employees, correctly and timely evaluate their performance and providing them the adequate compensations. All of these aspects have to be addressed and analyzed to find the best solutions. The organization should not only focus on the proper performance evaluation and internal equity of compensation but it also should concentrate on the organizational structure so that the development takes place in all of the related areas. This will potentially help the LHA to perform better as a properly organized organizational workforce and touch the heights of success. Reference List Armstrong, M Brown, D 1998, Relating Competencies to pay: The UK experience, Compensation Benefits Review, vol.30, no.3, pp. 2839. Armstrong, M 2005, Job evaluation: A guide to achieving equal pay, Kogan Page, London. Armstrong, M Murlis, H 2007, Reward Management: A Handbook of Remuneration Strategy and Practice, Kogan Page, London. Bacal, R 2012, Manager's guide to Performance management, McGraw-Hill, New York. 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