Duco uses many industry standard approaches to protect your data from exposure to unauthorised access. In some cases, your data may be so sensitive that you also need to hide it from Duco operations staff. Masked processes allow you to designate fields within your matching process as sensitive. The data for these fields will be encrypted at rest i.e. on the file system and in the database of your Duco environment. Only users to whom the process administrators grant access will be able to view the contents of these fields. Duco staff will not be able to see the contents of these fields at all.
*Think carefully about whether your process needs to be masked. While this feature improves the privacy of your data it may make it harder for Duco Support to assist you in the event of problems. Moreover, if you lose your encryption key, you could lose access to data in the matching process permanently.
Creating a user encryption key
To create, run or view the data of a masked process, a user must first create an encryption key. This key is unique to each user and is used to unlock all the masked processes the user has permission to access.
- Visit the Account details screen
- Under the Encryption key section click Generate key
- A key will be generated and displayed on the screen.
- Copy the entire contents of the box containing the key and save it somewhere safe. As soon as you leave the screen, Duco will forget this value and it will not be recoverable. Duco Support can reissue an encryption key but you may lose access to matching processes already set up with your original key.
*Store your encryption key securely and safely. If you lose this key Duco Support cannot reset it and you may permanently lose access to masked data in your matching processes.
Creating a masked process
To create a masked process you must have set up an encryption key. See the section above "Creating a user encryption key".
- Visit the Processes screen and click Create process
- Fill in the details of your process and enable the 'Mask sensitive fields' checkbox
- Click Create process
- Configure your data inputs
- When you supply an input file for analysis you may be prompted for your encryption key. Paste your encryption key into the box exactly as it appeared when you generated it and click OK.
Masking fields
When you choose to mask a process and set up your inputs you can then choose which of the input fields in the process to mask. You can choose to mask all the inputs but do not have to.
To mask an input field:
- After you have set up your format find the field you want to mask.
- Open the edit control by clicking on the arrow next to the field name
- Click the Mask this sensitive field checkbox
- Click Save
- Your field is now masked. You can reverse your choice by editing the field in the same way and unchecking the Mask this sensitive fieldcheckbox
- Fields that have been masked show the masked field icon
The Match fields screen indicates where a matching field is masked - if any of the input fields used to create the matched field, on either side, is masked then the matching field will be masked on both sides.
*You can change which of your input fields are masked as time goes on. The changes will only affect subsequent runs. If you unmask a field it will still be masked in previous runs. Conversely if you mask a previously unmasked field it will still be unmasked in previous runs.
Running masked processes
- Go to the home page for you process
- Click New Run
- If you want to Run with previous data click this option and your run will proceed as usual
- If you want to supply new data click Run with new data
- You may be prompted for your encryption key. Paste your encryption key into the box exactly as it appeared when you generated it and click OK.
- Choose the files you wish to you use for your run as usual
- Click Run
- Your run will proceed as usual
*You can only run masked processes via the user interface. Submission to masked processes via SFTP or the HTTP API are not supported.
Viewing masked process results
Any user of a masked process can view the results of a run but only users with the 'Unmask sensitive fields' permission will be able to see the contents of a masked field. Additionally, users with the 'Unmask sensitive fields' permission will need to provide their encryption key in order to view the contents of masked fields.
A user without the 'Unmask sensitive fields' permission will see masked fields marked with a 'closed eye' icon and the contents replaced with '••••••':
A user who was the 'Unmask sensitive fields' permission will see the same view until they ask to unmask the data.
- Click on the Unmask data button
- Paste your key into the box exactly as it appeared when you generated it and click OK.
- You will now see the unmasked values and the 'closed eye' icon will become and 'open eye' icon.
Authorising users to view masked data
You can add User admins, Config admins, Operators and Viewers to a masked process just like any other process. However, in order for the user to submit data for runs or view the values of masked fields, a user with must add the additional Unmask fields permission. Users without the Unmask fields permission will be unable to supply data for runs and will only see the obfuscated values for masked fields.
*The creator of a masked process automatically has the Unmask fields permission but all other users must be granted this explicitly.
- Log in as a user who has both User admin rights to the process and has the Unmask fields permission
- Go to the Permissions screen for the process
- Select the Unmask fields section at the bottom of the screen
- Click in the box and choose a user from the provided list
The user you choose must have configured an encryption key in order to be added to a process. If this is not the case, you will return an error and be unable to proceed.
- If you have not yet used your encryption key in this Duco session you will be prompted to provide it
- Paste your key into the box exactly as it appeared when you generated it and click OK.
*Unlike other permissions you can only add 'Unmask sensitive fields' to one user at a time. You cannot give this permission to groups.
Considerations when masking a process
- A masked process requires a secure encryption key, which must be used when logging into the process, running the process, etc.
- You can’t unmask fields within a process without this key.
- You can’t mask a process once it has already been created; this has to be toggled when the process is being created.
- You can’t copy a masked process.
- Submissions to a masked process via SFTP or the API are not supported.
- The ‘quick fix” option of adding a field to an equivalence table won’t work on a masked process.
- You can’t sort or filter a masked column in the UI.
- Masking makes working with a process heavily manual for an end-user.
- Masking a process can make it difficult for Duco to assist with queries, as it blocks our support team from seeing any of the masked data.
- You cannot promote a masked process from one environment to another.