Highlights:

  • Tokens, which bear no mathematical connection to the original data, are stored within the organization for operational use. This enables businesses to perform various activities while minimizing the risk of exposing sensitive information.
  • Tokenization aids companies in achieving PCI DSS compliance by minimizing the amount of PAN data stored internally.

In an era where data is a key asset, securing it is essential. Data security and governance remain top challenges for leaders, while leaks and breaches are increasingly common.

To protect data privacy, organizations are turning to data tokenization, which replaces sensitive business data assets like social security or bank account numbers with random tokens. These tokens have no inherent meaning and cannot be reverse engineered to reveal the original data.

What is a Token?

A token is a piece of data that acts as a substitute for another, more sensitive piece of information. On its own, a token holds little to no intrinsic value but becomes useful because it represents something valuable, such as a credit card number, PAN, or a Social Security number (SSN).

An apt analogy is a poker chip. Rather than placing cash directly on the table—which is prone to loss or theft—players use poker chips as stand-ins. These chips, however, are not inherently valuable as currency; even if stolen, they must be exchanged for the monetary value they represent to have any use.

Generating a token is the foundational step in the tokenization process, ensuring sensitive data is replaced with a secure, non-sensitive placeholder.

How to Create a Token in the Tokenization Process?

When a business joins forces with a third-party tokenization vendor, the process typically rolls in the following four steps:

  • Data transformation

Sensitive data is transferred to the third-party tokenization provider, where it is converted into nonsensitive placeholders known as tokens. Unlike encryption, tokenization has the benefit of not depending on keys to modify the original data.

  • Retrieval from internal systems

The sensitive data is completely removed from the organization’s internal systems and replaced with tokens, ensuring that the original sensitive information is no longer stored internally.

  • Operational utility of tokens

Tokens, which bear no mathematical connection to the original data, are stored within the organization for operational use. This enables businesses to perform various activities while minimizing the risk of exposure to sensitive information.

  • Securing external storage

The original sensitive data, replaced by tokens within the organization, is securely stored by the third-party tokenization provider outside the organization’s environment.

Tokenization eliminates the presence of sensitive data within the system, leaving no valuable information for potential attackers to target. This aids in preventing data breaches and ensuring a high level of security for sensitive information.

Data tokenization process has emerged as a critical tool for achieving PCI compliance by safeguarding sensitive payment card information while minimizing security risks.

PCI Tokenization

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) mandates that all organizations accepting, transmitting, or storing cardholder data must protect PAN information. Non-compliance can cause fines and harm to brand reputation.

Tokenization aids companies in achieving PCI DSS compliance by minimizing the amount of PAN data stored internally. Instead of retaining sensitive cardholder information, organizations work with tokens, significantly reducing their data footprint. With less sensitive data to manage, compliance requirements are simplified, potentially streamlining the audit process.

While tokenization plays a critical role in achieving PCI compliance by protecting sensitive payment information, understanding how it compares to encryption helps businesses choose the right approach for their specific security and compliance requirements.

Tokenization Vs. Encryption

Tokenization and encryption represent two sophisticated methodologies for securing sensitive information, each offering distinct mechanisms and advantages tailored to the evolving demands of data protection.

Tokenization Encryption
Tokenization creates a randomly generated token value for plain text and stores the corresponding mapping in a secure database. Encryption uses an algorithm and key to algorithmically convert plain text into cipher text.
As the database grows, it becomes challenging to scale securely while maintaining performance. Scales to handle large data volumes by using only a small encryption key to decrypt the data.
Applied to structured data fields, such as payment card numbers or social security numbers. Applicable to both structured to unstructured data, such as complete files.
Data exchange is gruesome as it demands direct access to the token vault that traces token values. Shares sensitive data with third parties who possess the encryption key.
The format can be preserved without compromising the strength of the security. Format-preserving encryption schemes involve a tradeoff, offering lower security strength.
The original data remains within the organization, fulfilling specific compliance requirements. The original data is transferred outside the organization, but in an encrypted format.

Tokenization solutions can be broadly classified into two distinct categories based on their approach to handling and securing sensitive data.

Categories of Tokenization

Tokenization replaces the original data with unique tokens or identifiers. Conventional tokenization solutions typically fall into two prime categories:

  • Vaulted tokenization

Vaulted tokenization replaces sensitive data with tokens while securely storing the original data in a token vault. When needed, tokens are sent to the vault for decryption, following strict and most advanced authentication to prevent unauthorized access. Token vaults are typically managed by separate entities, enhancing the overall security of the system.

  • Vaultless tokenization

Vaultless tokenization replaces sensitive data with tokens without storing the original data. Tokens are generated using algorithms, such as NIST-approved format-preserving encryption (e.g., AES FF1, AES FF3), or proprietary methods like lookup tables, depending on application requirements.

Tokenization business practices are essential strategies for securing sensitive data while ensuring compliance, reducing risk, and achieving greater operational efficiency across various industries.

Data Tokenization Best Practices

Here are some best practices to help you optimize the use of tokenization.

  • Securing token server

To comply with PCI standards, secure your token server with network segregation and strong encryption. As it handles token reversal, appropriate protection is critical to the system’s effectiveness.

  • Combining tokenization with encryption

Encryption providers increasingly use tokenization to complement their services. While some prefer tokenization or end-to-end encryption alone, combining both is ideal, especially for payment card processing. Tokenization of data excels at database security and irreversible data masking, while advanced encryption standard protects card data during transit.

  • Generating tokens randomly

To ensure tokens are irreversible, they must be generated randomly. Tokens should only link to PAN data via a reverse lookup in the token server. Random token generation is straightforward, as data type and size are insignificant, and randomization should always be applied.

  • Abstaining from homegrown system

While tokenized data seems simple, it requires careful implementation. Tokens must be securely generated and managed, with the token server meeting PCI compliance standards. In-house solutions often pose higher risks, as improperly secured systems or reversible tokens can compromise security and fail compliance requirements.

Before adapting tokenization, it’s essential to evaluate key criteria to ensure the solution aligns with your organization’s compliance and security needs.

Parameters to Check Before Adapting Data Security Tokenization

To choose the right tokenization solution, start by clearly defining your organization’s business requirements and use cases.

  • What are your specific use cases for tokenizing data, and what is your business objective? Identifying relevant use cases and defining your desired outcome is crucial in selecting the right solution for your needs.
  • What type of data does your organization aim to tokenize? Understanding the data elements to be tokenized and their intended use will influence your decision on the appropriate solution.
  • Do the data tokens need to be deterministic, where the same data always generates the same token? Learning how the data will be processed or leveraged by other applications may negate certain tokenization solutions.
  • Will the tokens be used only internally, or will they be shared across different business units and applications? The demand for shared tokens could raise the risk of token exposure, impacting your compatibility of tokenization solution.
  • How long should a token remain valid? You need to select a solution that aligns with your use cases, internal security policies, regulatory compliance, and cybersecurity

Understanding the key criteria for adopting tokenization highlights why it has become the preferred security solution for many businesses.

Why are Businesses Increasingly Adopting Data Tokenization System?

Tokenization’s ease of implementation, integration, and scalability make it widely adopted across industries. It provides an effective additional layer of security. Businesses have increasingly adopted tokenization for several reasons, including:

  • Stringent data regulations

Governments worldwide are enforcing stricter data regulations, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which mandates businesses to protect sensitive data and encourage pseudonymization.

  • Customizable security levels

Tokenization solutions offer customizable security levels for different types of data, ensuring that more sensitive information is protected with enhanced security.

  • Third-party risk mitigation

Many companies rely on third-party vendors and partners, granting them access to customer data platforms. Tokenization helps alleviate the risk of data exposure, ensuring only tokenized data is shared with vendors.

  • Identity theft prevention

Data tokenization platform lowers the risk of valuable data being stolen. It helps prevent fraud by ensuring that stolen tokenized data lacks the context needed for successful fraudulent activities, thus eliminating the risk of identity theft.

Conclusion

Data tokenization implementation offers numerous security and compliance advantages, including reduced security risks, a smaller audit scope, lower compliance costs, and simplified regulatory data handling.

If your company seeks to use sensitive data innovatively—such as for personalized offerings, fraud monitoring, financial risk reduction, or business intelligence investments—tokenization can help. It allows you to leverage obfuscated data for analytics while easing the regulatory burden of protecting sensitive information.

Fuel your expertise by surfing through the pool of exhaustive Security–oriented whitepapers from our resource library.