Using CA Service Virtualization › Using the Workstation and Console with CA Service Virtualization › Desensitizing Data › Dynamic Desensitization

Dynamic Desensitization

Dynamic desensitization occurs at the transport layer. Desensitization is invoked by enabling the Desensitize (transport layer) check box on the Basics tab of the Virtual Service Recorder.

This desensitization program uses volatile filters that ensure that sensitive information is never written to disk during the recording phase. The desensitize.xml file in the DevTest home directory configures data desensitizers to recognize known patterns such as credit card numbers. The file replaces the live data with realistic but unusable replacements. The file uses Regex pattern matching to recognize and find sensitive data. This file is parsed each time that the recorder is started.

You can use the built-in TestData string generation patterns as replacement data options. TestData provides 40,000 rows of test data, including replacement data for some common data types: names, addresses, telephone numbers, and credit card numbers.

You can customize these preset patterns to create your own. We recommend a regular expression toolkit such as RegexBuddy. RegexBuddy lets you paste in your recorded payload and interactively highlights Regex matches as you fine-tune the Regex.

Matches are processed in the order they exist in the file, so put your more specific matches first.

To avoid text escaping issues (especially with Regex), you must enclose <regex> and <replacement> child text in a CDATA element.