Patent ID: 8881224

Claim:
A method for providing application data to a user device requesting data from an application hosted on an application server, wherein the user device is connected to the application server through a communication network, the method comprising: receiving at the application server hosting the application, an application data request from the user device, the application data request comprising a request for application data from the application hosted on said application server; validating credentials of a user requesting the application data, wherein validation is performed to determine whether the user is authorized to access the requested application data; determining type of user based on the user credentials; responsive to determining that the user is not a privileged user: transferring the application data request from the application server hosting the application to a masking server; communicating the requested application data from a database utility to the masking server; masking the application data received at the masking server, based on pre-configured masking rules, and communicating the masked application data from the masking server to the application server hosting the application from which application data has been requested by the user device over the communication network; and communicating the masked application data from the application server hosting the application from which application data has been requested by the user device over the communication network, to the user device.