Tokenization and Data Security
- (Stanford University - Jaclyn Chen)
- Overview
Tokenization is a data security method that replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens, which are randomized strings of characters. Tokens are unique identifiers that retain relevant information about the original data without compromising its security. They can be used in a database or internal system without bringing the original data into scope. The original data is then stored securely outside of the organization's internal systems, such as in a token vault.
Tokenization can help protect many types of sensitive data, including:
- Payment card data
- Social Security numbers
- Telephone numbers
- Passport numbers
- Driver's license numbers
- Email addresses
- Bank account numbers
- Names, addresses, and birth dates
Tokenization can provide several benefits for securing sensitive data, including:
- Data protection: Tokenization can minimize the impact of a data breach by making data unreadable to hackers. Even if attackers gain access to tokenized data, they can't read it without accessing the token vault where the real data is stored.
- Enhanced customer assurance: Tokenization can increase consumer trust and offer an additional layer of security for eCommerce websites.
- Compliance: Tokenized data may remove systems from assessment scope for industry regulatory standards such as PCI DSS 3.2.1.
- Least-privileged access: Tokenization can help ensure that only people with the appropriate access can perform the de-tokenization process to access sensitive data.
[More to come ...]
