Handling Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in staging databases presents a significant challenge, requiring solutions that balance data protection with the need for realistic data environments. Traditional approaches like manual anonymization scripts or data masking libraries are often insufficient due to the maintenance burden and risk of schema changes. More advanced options include synthetic data generation and database replication with masking layers, each offering varying degrees of realism and operational complexity. Synthetic data is safe and consistent but lacks the unpredictability of real user behavior, while database replication with masking ensures realistic data with more infrastructure demands. An emerging solution involves creating anonymized database branches, as demonstrated by the PostgreSQL Anonymizer, which allows for real-time dynamic masking and easier management, providing a balance between realism and safety. This approach is exemplified by Neon’s branching feature, which simplifies the process of maintaining and updating staging environments by applying user-defined masking rules to create anonymized branches from production data, thus offering a practical alternative to extensive manual processes.