Know All about Tokenization And Data Security

How would it be if in the game of chess, you are asked to move your real physical self around the board instead of a game piece? Can you imagine travelling in a subway paying in cash instead of using a subway token? You would never dream about walking all around carrying all of the money with you. People prefer carrying pointers or “tokens” that have reference to your money like credit cards, debit cards, checks etc. While our money remains safely stored in the secure bank vaults unless we give somebody the permission to use it. Tokens work exactly in the same way.

In today’s world, the concept of a token usually refers to the act of transforming something simple and convenient for something that is cumbersome and complicated. In the world of payments, tokens have traditionally been used to enhance information security. A payment gateway firm Shift4 first introduced the term “tokenization” in the late 2005. It was a better way to protect Payment Card Information (PCI) data. Firms very recently extended the scope to include other types of business data such as health care and government related issues.

Tokenization is a system where you substitute the real payment card data with a proxy set of identifying information.  This is done so that merchants do not have to handle the sensitive and regulated data and also to prevent it from being insecure and more exposed than necessary. Bank accounts, medical records, criminal records, and various other types of personally identifiable information can be safeguarded with the help of this.  It is the means of protecting sensitive cardholder PII in order to comply with industry standards and government regulations.

Tokenization vs encryption

It is better than encryption. This is because of the simplicity of this method over encryption.  It does not require complex key management unlike encryption.  But its major advantage lies somewhere else. In this, the original file does not contain any sort of sensitive data so it cannot be decrypted for the sensitive data is simply not present there.  Many companies have already recognized this strategy as a better way to protect the sensitive data. And also it is being offered by the firms that include HP, IBM, mcafee, PGP, Dell, and Symantec. This system has no doubt shown better performance over the years.  It has better storage requirements and better transparency than many other security methods.

End to end encryption, better known as data field encryption, is a means of continuously protecting the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted data by encrypting it at the origin then decrypting it at its destination. The encrypted data travels securely through public networks and other such vulnerable channels to its recipient where it is decrypted. VPN or the virtual private network uses end to end encryption.

Which approach best fits into an organizations security architecture?

Pros of tokenization

It is much more preferable for smaller companies. It is easier to establish and maintain than encryption. The data is not stored or sent in its original form. This approach of tokenization has become very popular as it is an ideal way to increase security of credit card and e-commerce transactions while minimizing the cost and complexity of industrial regulations and standards especially the Payment Card Data Security Standard (PCI).