nuBridges announces nuBridges Protect Token Manager, a data security software solution that combines universal format-preserving tokenization, strong encryption, and unified key management in one platform-agnostic package. The new product is for enterprises that need to protect volumes of personally identifiable information (PII) as well as payment card numbers from theft, while reducing complexity and simplifying compliance management for data security standards and privacy laws.

Unlike traditional encryption methods in which the encrypted data, or "ciphertext," is stored in databases and applications throughout the enterprise, tokenization substitutes a token—or surrogate value—in place of the original data. Tokens can then be passed around the network between applications, databases, and business processes safely, while leaving the encrypted data it represents securely stored in a central data vault.

Protect Token Manager introduces a variation of tokenization—format-preserving tokenization. With this format-preserving model, tokens that maintain the length and format of the original data can be generated for all types of sensitive customer, employee, and company confidential information, thereby minimizing impact on existing systems, because the token matches the format of the original value. Some of nuBridges Protect Token Manager's other features include the ability to

• reduce sensitive data storage footprint. By centralizing encrypted data storage in a single location within the enterprise, multiple points of risk are eliminated and security management is simplified.
• enforcing strict one-to-one relationships between tokens and data values. This ensures referential integrity whenever an encrypted field is present across multiple applications and data sets, enabling data and trend analysis to continue uninterrupted.
• maintain internal data security control. This allows companies to maintain control of sensitive data and encryption key lifecycle management, including safeguarding the encryption keys that provide authorized access to protected data.
• narrow the scope for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) audits. By limiting occurrences of encrypted data to a central vault, organizations can also reduce the number of systems, applications, and processes that must comply with PCI DSS and other mandates. This, in turn, reduces the time and cost required to pass annual compliance audits.
• address data protection needs. This is accomplished across multiple platforms, including mainframe, distributed systems and IBM i; and multiple databases, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2 and more.

nuBridges Protect Token Manager is available now. For more information, visit nubridges.com/solutions/tokenization.