End-to-end data security

RSA announced its RSA Data Protection Manager product which combines tokenization and application encryption, two popular application-based controls, with advanced token and key management to deliver end-to-end data security.

This combination of data protection and key management technologies is engineered to make data more secure, while lowering operational costs of data protection by consolidating the management layer. By protecting data at the source, within the application that’s creating or using it, RSA’s product helps ensure seamless data protection throughout the information lifecycle.

RSA Data Protection Manager is engineered to broaden the scope of how organizations can use tokenization. RSA has combined its tokenization technology with services from partners like First Data Corporation and VeriFone to secure payment card data. Beyond payment processors, however, tokenization can also help provide protection for other industries such as financial services (personally identifiable information or PII, social security numbers) and healthcare (personal health information or PHI).

Tokenized values maintain their original format, which limits the deployment impact while still providing a high level of protection. In addition, tokens can maintain certain portions of the original data (i.e., the last four digits of a social security number) so other applications can potentially make business use of tokens without ever having access to the real information.

RSA’s ability to implement this “hybrid” approach of encryption and tokenization helps customers to get the best of both worlds — the performance benefits of encryption and the operational benefits of tokenization.