Patent ID: 8209549

Claim:
A non-transitory machine-readable medium having machine executable instructions for processing a set of private data items contained therein, the machine-executable instructions performing the following operations: receiving a set of private data items, the set of private data items containing personally identifiable information including at least one of the following: first name values, middle name values, and last name values; retrieving a configuration file containing information regarding transformation of the set of private data items; transforming the set of private data items into a set of masked data items using the information, the masked data items containing no personally identifiable information and wherein the set of data items includes: retrieving a name value; hashing the name value to obtain a numerical key; and retrieving a masked name value from a name table using the numerical key including receiving a synchronization key and hashing the synchronization key to obtain a hashed value; deriving a second numerical key from the hashed value combining the second numerical key with the numerical key to obtain a lookup value; and retrieving a masked name value from the name table using the lookup value receiving a request from a testing system for the set of masked data items; standardizing the set of masked data items; and providing the set of standardized masked data items to the testing system.