Test data is needed for any quality application that goes through a quality analysis department. Test data is important for any development firm in that it provides a method for quality analysis to manipulate, change, and even destroy otherwise sensitive data. Test data needs to be openly available to internal testing departments so that they can do heavy testing. Their job is to try to destroy your application (although it sounds harsh, it is better for them to find the bug rather than a customer).

Ethical Aspects

A lot of the typical test data standards are a derivative of typical ethical standards for data. Allowing any user whether it is a programmer or a data entry specialist to have access to sensitive data is unethical for businesses. If your business holds private data such as bank, financial, or medical information then it should have the highest standards in protecting its customers from their data being used for fraud or other unethical uses.

Private, Sensitive Information

Certain information is extremely sensitive for individuals, mainly your customers. Sensitive data includes several different aspects of customer data. Credit cards, medical information, and social security numbers are just a few of the highly sensitive data that needs to be secured for your customer’s safety. When providing data for your quality analysis staff or even unit testing for your developers, it is important to create test data that does not relate to your customer’s real life information.

Masking Sensitive Data

There are several ways to provide good test data for your team without giving into customer data insecurity. When providing credit cards, you can provide fake numbers by changing numbers around or even creating entirely fake credit card numbers. Most credit card processing companies allow for a testing environment, so this will work with certain merchant accounts.

You also need to mask social security numbers to protect your customers’ identity. Identity fraud is a popular criminal activity, so protect your customers and never give out actual social security numbers. Other information such as financial and medical information should also be masked from general employee viewing. It protects your company from major lawsuits, and it gives your company a more reputable testing environment.

When creating test environment, make sure to secure your customers’ information without making it public to everyone. Mask sensitive information, provide your quality analysis team with good data, and you can protect your customers while also providing error proof applications.