Ease and Security: How Retailers Are Using Informatica For Cloud Test Data Management

Ease and Security: How Retailers Are Using Informatica For Cloud Test Data Management

Today’s top retailers are becoming increasingly savvy about leveraging customers’ devices to anticipate their needs—take shopping promotions, for example. One grocery store has a mobile app that presents coupons based on which aisle the customers are in and what items they had previously purchased. Digital innovation has become thoroughly integrated into supply chain management and the way retailers use smart data to drive more business—whether their presence is virtual or physical.

As retailers evolve in order to keep pace with the changing demands of consumers and technology, their development teams are busier than ever before. In addition, testing these apps means accessing personal data to identify the customer and past buying habits, so it is crucial to mask this data in test environments to reduce exposure of user data in case of a data breach. Between development and production environments, there are often multiple “sandbox” spaces which in-house development teams have to work with. Developers can spend a significant amount of time organizing data, ensuring that sensitive data is properly secured, and moving data from one environment to another—all steps that can slow down the development process. The right tools can make it faster and easier to develop a secure sandbox space for cloud test management. Informatica Cloud Test and Data Management lets developers design, test, and deploy new applications quickly and efficiently.

How the Right Solutions Improve IT Development Security

The Ponemon Institute reports that the average data breach costs $4.5 million dollars. For retailers, one “small” data breach can lead to expensive class-action lawsuits, brand damage, and loss of customers (not to mention running afoul of government regulators and facing fines and penalties). Today’s retail companies and their development teams must balance the need for faster development cycles with a clear focus on data security. That begins with ensuring that each of your environments—from development to test to deployment—is fully secure.

However, securing test datasets against breaches can be a time-consuming process. One estimate suggested that 30% of a developer’s time in testing could be spent securing and managing sensitive data, such as customer payment information or personal contact details. As a result, many retailers don’t implement masking at the test stage, which can lead to potential security risks.

Informatica can assist with automating sensitive data discovery and creating policy-driven data masking. As a result, sensitive production data is de-identified and safe to use for testing. A data management tool enables more frequent refresh cycles leading to better discovery and fixing of bugs related to various data patterns. This helps free up your development and testing team’s time, while also ensuring that security solutions are applied consistently across datasets.

Choosing the Best Implementation Partner

Tools like Informatica can give retail development teams a speed and security advantage. However, it’s important that any investment in this or similar solutions begin with a comprehensive assessment from a qualified partner. With our help, you’ll be able to assess cloud data migration in the context of your broader IT infrastructure and determine how to meet the compliance and business needs of your company, while keeping to deadlines for rolling out the latest business and technology advances that will assist your customers. Contact us today to get started.

Kevin Moos, January 2017