Patent ID: 8910296

Claim:
A method comprising: determining, at a first network device, that network device information collected from a particular network device includes first non-sensitive data and sensitive data; in response to the determining, generating mapping data that maps dummy data to the sensitive data; generating first output data that comprises the first non-sensitive data and the dummy data; sending the first output data to a second network device; receiving a first report file, from the second network device, that includes first support information for the particular network device and the dummy data; based on the mapping data, replacing, at the first network device, the dummy data in the report file with the sensitive data; after receiving the first report file, sending, to the second network device, second output data that comprises second non-sensitive data for the particular device, different than the first non-sensitive data, and the dummy data; receiving a second report file, from the second network device, that includes second support information, different than the first support information, and the dummy data; based on the mapping data, replacing, at the first network device, the dummy data in the second report file with the sensitive data.