Generation of updatable anonymized data records for testing and developing purposes

• US 20060059189A1
• Filed: 08/09/2005
• Published: 03/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: UBS Business Solutions AG (UBS Ag)
• Original Assignee: UBS Ag
• Inventors: Dunki, Peter, Frei, Christoph
• Granted Patent: US 8,117,219 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3672 Test management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/217 Database tuning G06F16/2282 takes precedence; database performance monitoring G06F11/3409
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6254 by anonymising data, e.g. decorrelating personal data from the owner's identification

Abstract

A mechanism is described for the computer-aided generation of anonymized data records for developing and testing application programs that are intended for use in a productive network (12). A method according to the invention comprises the provision of at least one productive database (14) containing data records that contain productive data elements to be anonymized, provision of at least one non-productive database (22) containing data records that likewise contain data elements, the generation of an assignment between data records of the non-productive database (22) and data records of the productive database (14), and also the generation of an anonymized data record by replacing the data elements to be anonymized in a data record from the productive database (14) with the data elements of an assigned data record from the non-productive database (22). The assignment is maintained during a later generation of new anonymized data records and/or during an updating of already generated anonymized data records in order to be able to maintain the test data and in order to make simpler error analysis possible.

Claims

1. A method for the computer-aided generation of anonymized data records for developing and testing application programs that are intended for use in a productive environment, comprising the steps of:

providing at least one productive database containing data records that contain productive data elements to be anonymized;

providing at least one non-productive database containing data records that contain data elements;

generating an assignment between data records of the non-productive database and data records of the productive database;

generating anonymized data records by replacing the data elements to be anonymized in data records from the productive database with data elements of the respectively assigned data records from the non-productive database, the assignment being maintained during at least one of a generation of new anonymized data records and an updating of the already generated anonymized data records.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the assignment permits a retrospective determination of the data element or data record from the productive database assigned to an anonymized data element or data record.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the assignment takes place within the productive environment.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the productive environment comprises a productive computer network containing a plurality of network components and in that access to the assignment is granted only to network components having a suitable authorization in the productive environment.

5. The method according to claim 3, wherein a non-productive environment is provided and no access is granted to the assignment from the non-productive environment.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the assignment takes place deterministically.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the assignment is based on a cryptographic mechanism.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the assignment is based on an assignment table.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the assignment table has been generated random-based.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein the assignment assigns precisely one non-productive data record to each productive record to be anonymized.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the anonymized data records are updated at regular time intervals or under user control.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein the data elements contained in the non-productive database have a meaning that can be comprehended by a user.

13. The method according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the data elements contained in the productive database and the data elements contained in the non-productive database contain at least one of name data and address data.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein the data elements in the non-productive database were extracted from a publicly accessible database or file.

15. A computer program product comprising program code means for performing the method according to claim 1 when the computer program product is executed on one or more computers.

16. The computer program product according to claim 15, stored on a computer-readable data medium.

17. A computer system for generating anonymized data records for developing and testing application programs that are intended for use in a productive environment, comprising:

at least one productive database containing data records that contain productive data elements to be anonymized;

at least one non-productive database containing data records that contain data elements;

a computer for generating anonymized data records, an assignment existing between data records of the non-productive database and data records of the productive database that is maintained during at least one of a generation of new anonymized data records and an updating of the already generated anonymized data records, and the computer generating an anonymized data record by replacing the data elements to be anonymized in a data record from the productive database by the data elements of an assigned data record from the non-productive database.