What is the primary purpose of Oracle Data Redaction?

The primary purpose of Oracle Data Redaction is to mask data returned from queries issued by applications. This feature allows organizations to protect sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or personal identification numbers, while still making it accessible for legitimate uses. For instance, when an application retrieves data from a database, Data Redaction can dynamically modify the returned data in a way that certain sensitive parts are obfuscated or masked. This ensures that only authorized users can see the complete details, thereby enhancing security and compliance with data protection regulations.

While encryption is a means to secure data at rest or in transit, it does not alter the way data is displayed in query results, which is the core functionality of Data Redaction. Ensuring data integrity relates to maintaining the correctness and consistency of data during transactions, which is not the role of Data Redaction. Additionally, compressing database sizes enhances storage efficiency but does not deal with the visibility or accessibility of sensitive information in the same manner that redaction does.