Masking and scrambling
Mask personal and confidential data in copies of ECC, S/4HANA and SAP HANA before testers, partners or AI agents see it, with the same replacement values in every table and every connected system.
Personal data in SAP sits in master data, in documents that point to it, and in the custom tables your team added.
| Data | Example SAP tables | Typical fields |
|---|---|---|
| Customers | KNA1, ADRC, ADR6, BUT000 | Names, street addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, tax numbers |
| Vendors | LFA1, LFBK, ADRC | Names, addresses, bank account details, tax numbers |
| Employees | PA0002, PA0006, PA0008, PA0009 | Names, dates of birth, home addresses, pay, bank details |
| Sales and finance documents | VBPA, BSEG, ACDOCA | One-time customer addresses, free-text line items, references to customers and vendors |
| Your own data | Z-tables, custom fields | Whatever your developers added, found by scanning rather than by guessing |
Each field gets the rule that protects it without breaking the process that uses it.
Replace a value with a realistic one of the same kind: a name with a name, a street with a street.
Shuffle values within a column, so distributions and totals stay realistic.
Create synthetic values where nothing from the original should survive.
Tax numbers, IBANs and postal codes stay valid, so SAP's checks still pass.
Leave country, currency and company code alone: they drive pricing, tax and posting logic.
Mask each table on its own and joins break: the customer on the order no longer matches the customer in the master data, and tests fail for the wrong reason. Synthesized gives each original value one replacement and applies it everywhere that value appears.
Customer and vendor masters (KNA1, LFA1) hold names and addresses directly, alongside central address tables (ADRC). Mask them together.
The business partner (BUT000) leads, and customer-vendor integration keeps KNA1 and LFA1 in step with it. Mask both to the same values.
HANA's built-in data masking hides values from some users at query time, while the stored data stays unchanged. Test copies need the stored values replaced.
Masking replaces a value with a realistic substitute, scrambling shuffles real values within a column, and synthetic data is generated without copying any original value. Most SAP test systems use all three, field by field.
Fields SAP validates, such as tax numbers, IBANs and postal codes, keep a valid format, so documents still post.
Yes. Scanning finds personal data in custom tables and fields, and they get rules the same way standard tables do.
Data that can no longer be linked to a person is anonymous and outside GDPR. Pseudonymised data, which a key can reverse, still counts as personal data. Your data protection officer decides which describes your test data.
Start with a 30-minute health check. If it's a fit, a 10-day validation scans one QA system, standard and Z-tables included, and masks it on your own data.
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