Substitution masking replaces a column of data with similar but unrelated data. For example, you can create a dictionary that contains male and female first names. Use the dictionary to perform substitution masking on a column that contains both male and female first names.

You can configure custom substitution masking to replace the target column with unique masked values for every unique source column value. Unique masking requires a storage connection for source- to dictionary-value mapping.

Before you can use a dictionary or storage connection in a masking rule assignment, you must add the dictionary and storage connection to the transformation. Add the connections to the transformation on the

Masking Rules

tab. For flat file dictionaries, create a connection to the flat file dictionary from the

Configure | Connections

view and add the connection to the transformation.

When you configure custom substitution masking, select the dictionary type and the dictionary connection. You can then select the column that you want to use from the dictionary. To support non-English characters, you can use different code pages from a flat file connection.

The flat file connection code page and the Secure Agent system code page must be compatible for the masking task to work.

You can substitute data with repeatable or nonrepeatable values. When you choose repeatable values, the Data Masking transformation produces deterministic results for the same source data and seed value. You must configure a seed value to substitute data with deterministic results. You can substitute more than one column of data with masked values from the same dictionary row.