With the Fivetran column blocking feature, you can block specific columns from replicating to your warehouse. Now, with our column hashing feature (in beta), you can join across data sets without introducing sensitive data into your data warehouse.

What is column hashing?

Hashing is a one-way operation, unlike encryption, which involves both encryption and decryption. Once data is hashed, it cannot be returned to its previous state. As a result, you can use column hashing to anonymize warehouse data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), and bring your organization into compliance with GDPR.

Anonymizing data is also helpful from an analytical perspective. Because the hashed result is the same across data sources, you can still join on key fields, such as email addresses, without the risk of exposing PII.

How do I set it up?

It’s as simple as going into the connector detail view in your dashboard and selecting the columns you want to hash. Currently, hashing is available for the following connectors: Dynamics 365, Marketo, MariaDB, MySQL, NetSuite, Oracle, Postgres, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SQL Server and Zuora.

The next time your data syncs, Fivetran will ingest your data, hash it, and write the hashed data to your warehouse. Fivetran adds an extra layer of security by using a unique salt per warehouse to ensure that the data cannot be decoded based on knowledge of the default Fivetran algorithm.

We hope this feature enables you to conduct even stronger analyses of your data. If you have any questions or wish to beta test our column hashing feature, feel free to reach out to our sales team.