Track · 2:30 · Liner note
The Asterisk Does Its Job
PII masking replaces part of a sensitive value, such as the digits of a national ID or the characters of an email, so people can work with the data without seeing personal information.
Some columns should never be read in full by most people: national IDs, phone numbers, emails. PII masking swaps part of the value for asterisks or hashes, so analysts can still count, group and recognize a record without exposing the person behind it. The Asterisk Does Its Job is the quiet success of that mechanism.
Mask by role and at the point of access, not in the dashboard, where a motivated user can bypass it. Decide what stays visible, such as the last four digits, and check that the masked column still supports the joins people need.