US Patent 9135315 Data masking

Aspects include data masking in database operations including intercepting a database query and identifying masked data in the query. The masked data in the query is unmasked by substituting the masked data with equivalent real values. The unmasked query is sent to the database engine, and a result provided by the database engine in response to the unmasked query is intercepted. The values in the result that correspond to sensitive information are identified. The result is masked by substituting the values in the result corresponding to sensitive information with masked equivalents. The masked result is returned to a user.