IRI CellShield Brings Data Security to Excel Spreadsheets

Select-and-Click Masking, Encryption, and Pseudonymization

MELBOURNE, Fla.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc., The CoSort® Company and developer of FieldShield® data masking software for the enterprise, has released a low-cost security add-in for Microsoft Excel® 2010 and 2013. IRI CellShield™ masks, encrypts, or pseudonymizes the sensitive data Excel users select.

“CellShield is a simple, but effective, way to mitigate the risk of security breaches and help comply with privacy laws applicable to data in Excel”

CellShield launches from the Excel toolbar. After selecting the range of values to protect (or reveal, if authorized), users click on a CellShield function to change the data in-place, or send it to a new worksheet. Results are immediate, and available for other spreadsheets or files.

“CellShield is a simple, but effective, way to mitigate the risk of security breaches and help comply with privacy laws applicable to data in Excel,” observed Femitha Majeed, a consultant at the multinational information security assurance firm SecureITLab. “Different functions for each column harden the target by creating multiple obstacles for network hackers or laptop thieves,” she added. CellShield’s format-preserving encryption, in particular, “is a PCI DSS-compliant means of securing primary account (credit card) numbers stored in spreadsheets that can also bait and expose unauthorized holders of the encrypted values.”

CellShield users on different PCs can also securely share documents with each other; one user encrypts values another decrypts with the matching algorithm and key. Reverse pseudonymization is also possible via access to the restore set. Partial or full-cell masking (character redaction), however, is non-reversible.

CellShield uses a subset of functions from, and is compatible with, the full IRI FieldShield data masking package for multiple data sources. CellShield can restore values FieldShield protected, and vice versa. IRI will follow CellShield with enterprise-wide pattern discovery and remediation for Excel.

CellShield is being introduced at $35 per PC. Download information is at www.iri.com/products/cellshield, with operational details at: www.iri.com/blog/data-protection/introducing-iri-cellshield-protect-sensitive-data-excel-spreadsheets/

About IRI, The CoSort Company

Founded 1978, IRI develops fast, Eclipse-supported software for managing and protecting big data in: legacy migration, DW/BI, and application development environments. IRI products include: CoSort® for sorting, transformation, and reporting; FACT™ for VLDB unloads and reorgs; NextForm® for data and DB conversion; FieldShield for static and dynamic data masking; and, RowGen™ for creating safe, realistic DB and file test data from metadata.