Functional Requirements for Encryption, Tokenization, and Data Masking

This page outlines the key functional requirements that organizations should consider when evaluating encryption, tokenization, and data masking solutions. Whether you're securing payment data, personal information, or confidential business records, these requirements will help you define the capabilities needed to safeguard your data effectively. Each requirement focuses on ensuring security, flexibility, and compliance with industry standards, making it a valuable reference for teams implementing encryption, tokenization, or data masking solutions.

Tokenization Requirements

1. Format-Preserving Encryption/Tokenization/Masking: The solution should preserve the format and structure of the original data (e.g., keeping the same length for sensitive data like credit card numbers), ensuring seamless integration with existing systems.
2. Reversibility: The solution must support reversible operations for encryption and tokenization, allowing authorized users to retrieve the original data when needed. Non-reversible masking techniques may be applied in situations where permanent data obscurity is required.
3. Partial Encryption/Tokenization/Masking Capabilities: The solution must support partial masking or tokenization, allowing certain portions of sensitive data to remain visible (e.g., showing only the last four digits of a credit card number). This feature ensures data usability while protecting sensitive details.
4. Vault-less Architecture: The solution should eliminate the need for a central vault to store tokens, encrypted data, or masked data mappings, reducing risks associated with centralized storage and minimizing management overhead.
5. Identity Awareness and Context: Access to encrypted, tokenized, or masked data should be governed by role-based access controls (RBAC), tied to user identities and managed through an Identity Provider (IDP), supporting Zero Trust principles.
6. Regulatory Compliance: The solution must support compliance with data protection laws and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS) by ensuring sensitive data is protected, and access to decrypted, de-tokenized, or unmasked data is restricted to authorized users.
7. Performance and Scalability: The solution should be optimized for high performance, capable of handling large volumes of data without significant latency, and scalable to meet growing organizational demands.
8. Integrated Key Management: For encryption and tokenization, the solution must include integrated key management (or support external KMS), ensuring secure key storage, rotation, and lifecycle management.
9. Key Rotation Support: The solution should support seamless key rotation for encryption and tokenization, ensuring that data protected with older keys can still be accessed or decrypted when required.
10. Audit Logging: All operations (encryption, decryption, tokenization, masking, and access) should be logged to ensure transparency, traceability, and compliance, facilitating auditing and security investigations.
11. API and SDK Integration: The solution must provide APIs and SDKs for easy integration with applications, databases, and CI/CD pipelines, supporting both low-code and no-code development environments.
12. Insider Threat and Credential Compromise Protection: The solution must ensure that even privileged users, like database administrators, cannot access sensitive encrypted, tokenized, or masked data without explicit authorization, reducing the risk of insider threats.