The quality of test data matters. If applications are tested against generic data many problems can arise once the application is put into production. To avoid problems, applications must be tested rigorously against data that is as similar as possible to the actual data that will be used.

Production data is often not practical for use in a test system due to security and regulatory concerns. Data that has personally identifiable information must be altered in order to protect people from having sensitive data exposed to the development and testing teams. Test data management uses data masking techniques to obfuscate personally identifiable information while still retaining the formatting and other data properties that are important for testing.

Test data management is used by organizations that do a lot of business-critical processing of sensitive data. It is especially important in industries such as health care where a breach of sensitive customer data could be extremely damaging. However, most organizations have some data that is sensitive and needs to be masked for testing purposes.

Test data management helps organizations create better quality software that will perform reliably on deployment. It prevents bug fixes and rollbacks and overall creates a more cost-efficient software deployment process. It also lowers the organization’s compliance and security risks.