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Data Masking Components: Zip Code Dynamic

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"Zip Code Dynamic"

API Reference, CLR Reference (links)

Usage Instructions:

Purpose

The purpose of the component is to mask such values as Account or Patient Numbers that often consist of the combination of Alpha and Numeric characters and are not formed by a specific rule.

Algorithm

Variation of Random Character Permutation Algorithm

Description

The Masking Zip Code Dynamic component consistently changes United States zip codes to the zip codes with three digits prefixes that are currently in use and changes Canadian postal codes provided on input to other Canadian postal codes values at the output. The component expects a string consisting of digits only for US postal codes and “A1A A1A’ format for the Canadian Postal codes. Any other format will result in failure. If a practitioner wants to mask a zip or address code containing alphanumeric combination other than the ones in Zip code dictionary, s/he could use Generic Alphanumeric component. Zip Code Dynamic component masks data for US zip code with statistically limited population in consideration of 18 rules of “Safe Harbor”.

Usage Instructions:

1. Configure a source that contains the column with alphabetical and numeric characters. The data in the column may also include any other character that will be treated as a separator.
2. Drag and Drop Zip Code Dynamic masking component, connect the source and the generic alpha numeric component with the source's precedence constraint:
3. Now, the precedence constraint (the blue arrow) passes proper meta-data to the Zip Code Dynamic component. If you click on constraint, you will see:
4. Now that the metadata for the Zip Code Dynamic exists, and values are passed into the data masking component, please open the component editor:
5. In the second tab, there are input columns. Please check-mark only one column, the one that you will be masking with Zip Code Dynamic algorithm:
6. This will create an extra column with the prefix “Masked_”.
7. Create a connection manager for the destination and configure source component for the destination. In the connection manager, in the tab “Mappings”, specify that you want newly created Field_Masked to be a field replacing the original value. For that, just click on the available input columns, choose the masked value, and map to the “Available Destination Columns”
8. Now, all the configurations are complete for the valid values. You can run the package with the Zip Code Dynamic Data Masking component, and see the results of data masking:

Error Handling

9. If, however, there are invalid values in the package's source, one would need to configure error handling. Invalid values are those that are not conforming to the rules of the entity. To handle invalid values, each data masking component has error handling precedence constraint. One needs to create error destination connection and connect red arrow (error handling constraint) with this destination. As the connection is made, one needs to configure the state of failure: “Fail”,”Ignore” or “Redirect”.
10. It is recommended that one re-directs the output into the error destination, so that later one be able to analyze and process data for quality purposes. The Zip Code Dynamic components errors are the only ones not recommended for further processing as it is truly hard to break their format.
11. It is our suggestion that with Zip Code Dynamic component one should not process erroneous data without further analysis at all.

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