Masking personally-identifiable information

Information in the logs can be personally-identifiable or sensitive information, for example, user names, email addresses, phone numbers that you may not want to disclose. Sensitive information should be exposed only to the authorized users from whom there is no risk of security violations. To avoid any potential security pitfall, you can mask the personally-identifiable or sensitive information.

In Adeptia Connect, when a user takes a look at the logs in the Dashboard Transactions  section, there are several information which may not be applicable or allowed for the user to see. Some of the sections where you find sensitive information include Repository, Execution Details, Context Info, and Reference column. 

Configuring masking 

You can mask sensitive information to ensure that they are not exposed to unauthorized users. There are two steps you need to follow to configure masking.

• Updating the finders.xml file
• Enabling the View User Data property

Updating the finders.xml file

Adeptia Connect contains finders.xml file wherein you can define properties and patterns to mask the sensitive details. You can find the finders.xml at shared/masking location. Follow the steps below to update this file. 

1. 1. Go to shared/masking location.
   2. Open finders.xml file.

   3. Add the code to the file based on what details you want to mask.

      If you have migrated from AC 3.x to AC v4.2, you may like to incorporate the patterns and properties that you may have defined in the mask.properties and finders.xml file in the AC v3.x environment. 

      
      The following example illustrates what and how should be the code.

      <finder>
      		<name>Email</name>
      		<pattern>\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@([A-Z0-9.-]+)\.([A-Z]{2,4})\b</pattern>
      		<mask-text>email@XXXX.XXXX<mask-text/>
      		<enabled>true</enabled>
      	</finder>
      	<finder>
      		<name>SSN-spaces</name>
      		<pattern>[0-9]{3}\s[0-9]{2}\s[0-9]{4}</pattern>
      		<mask-text>XXX XX XXXX<mask-text/>
      		<enabled>true</enabled>
      	</finder>
      	<finder>
      		<name>SSN-dashes</name>
      		<pattern>[0-9]{3}\-[0-9]{2}\-[0-9]{4}</pattern>
      		<mask-text>XXX-XX-XXXX<mask-text/>
      		<enabled>true</enabled>
      	</finder>
      	<finder>
      		<name>USPhone-Formatted</name>
      		<pattern>[\()\.]*[0-9]{3}[\)\ \-\.]{1,2}[0-9]{3}[\-\ \.][0-9]{4}</pattern>
      		<mask-text>XXX-XXX-XXXX<mask-text/>
      		<enabled>true</enabled>
      	</finder>

      Where,

      1. name - Name of the field whose value you want to mask.
      2. pattern - Pattern in which the masked information will be visible to the user.
      3. mask-text - 
      4. enabled - The property to be set to true if you want to show that information as masked.
   4. Save the file.

Enabling the View User Data property

View User Data property is available on Define Standard Entities Permissions window which comes in course of creation of a role by an authorized user. If you clear this View User Data check box, the users with this role will not be able to see the sensitive information which you have masked in the finders.xml file discussed above. By default, this property is enabled.

Log details impacted by masking

When you enable masking, the following sections are impacted and they will not display the details which you were able to see before masking. 

• File names under the Reference column will be masked. 
• In Transaction execution details, the links View Source Data and View Repository will not be visible. 
• The Repository option under the Action menu will be hidden. 
• The Context Info sections under the Action menu will display only the details which are not masked.
• The sensitive information in some of the fields in the EDI logs is also masked for unauthorized users. For more details, visit this page.

 The masked information in these sections will be shown as per the pattern and the mask-text defined in the in the finders.xml file.