Data Masking vs Data Encryption: Which One Protects Data During Processing?

Data masking and encryption are both essential data protection methods, each addressing different aspects of data security. Data masking replaces real values with fictitious ones, making it irreversible and particularly useful for non-production environments like testing and development, while encryption scrambles data to make it unreadable without a decryption key, ideal for securing data at rest and in transit. However, both methods fall short in protecting data during active processing, exposing vulnerabilities when data is computed on or shared for collaborative analysis. Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), offer a solution by enabling computation on encrypted data without exposing it, crucial for modern data use cases involving AI and cross-organizational collaboration. Duality Technologies specializes in operationalizing these PETs, allowing organizations to securely process sensitive data without the risk of exposure, thus closing the security gap that traditional masking and encryption leave open during active processing.

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