What does obfuscate mean?

Three of the most common techniques used to obfuscate data are encryption, tokenization, and data masking . Encryption, tokenization, and data masking work in different ways. Encryption and tokenization are reversible in that the original values can be derived from the obfuscated data.

Obfuscation means to make something difficult to understand . Programming code is often obfuscated to protect intellectual property or trade secrets, and to prevent an attacker from reverse engineering a proprietary software program. Encrypting some or all of a program’s code is one obfuscation method.

Data obfuscation is the process of replacing sensitive information with data that looks like real production information, making it useless to malicious actors .