3. Protect sensitive data

6 minutes

Telemetry can contain personal, authentication, or payment information. In this chapter, you configure two processors to protect that data:

The Attributes Processor updates, hashes, or removes known span attributes.
The Redaction Processor masks values matching patterns such as payment-card numbers.

The original /movie-validator span includes:

text
Attributes:
     -> user.name: Str(George Lucas)
     -> user.phone_number: Str(+1555-867-5309)
     -> user.email: Str(george@deathstar.email)
     -> user.password: Str(LOTR>StarWars1-2-3)
     -> user.visa: Str(4111 1111 1111 1111)
     -> user.amex: Str(3782 822463 10005)
     -> user.mastercard: Str(5555 5555 5555 4444)

You replace the phone number, hash the email address, remove the password, and mask the Visa and Mastercard values. You leave the Amex value visible so you can see what happens when a redaction policy is incomplete.

Continue editing the same Config Builder project from Chapter 2. Both processors run in the Collector before all trace exporters.