During an Agent Chat or Virtual Agent conversation, the agent or requester may accidentally enter sensitive data. The Sensitive Data Handler detects and masks the sensitive data so it is not viewed by the agent or requester. The Sensitive Data Handler can also collect sensitive data as part of a business process, such as user authentication.

Possible situations when the Sensitive Data Handler might detect and mask sensitive data include:
  • A requester enters sensitive data, such as a social security number, during a conversation with a live agent or virtual agent.
  • An agent enters company information, such as a manager's confidential email address, that the requester should not have access to.
  • A requester enters sensitive data in a pre-chat or post-chat survey.

The Sensitive Data Handler detects and masks sensitive data when the requester is conversing through the web client, mobile (iOS/Android), or any of the supported adapter channels (SMS/Slack/Teams/Workplace).

Sensitive data being masked in an Agent Chat conversation.
You can configure the following:
  • Regular expressions for each type of sensitive data (for example, social security number or credit card number).
  • Whether sensitive data handling works only for inbound (from requester) messages, outbound (from live agent) messages, or both.
  • Messages that displays to the requester or agent informing them that sensitive data has been masked.

If the requester sends a message containing sensitive data to an agent, a system message is sent to the requester and agent notifying both that the message contained sensitive data. The sensitive data is masked on the transcript and marked as sensitive on the internal transcript.

If an agent tries to send a message containing sensitive data to a requester, the message is not sent to the requester. Instead, an error is displayed to the agent and the message is tagged as sensitive in the internal transcript.

The Sensitive Data Handler can be configured to pass user authentication information to another entity. The requester might provide sensitive data during a conversation to prove their identity (for example, social security number, date or birth, email address).

The Sensitive Data Handler plugin [com.glide.sensitive_data_handling] can be installed by itself, without a Glide Virtual Agent or Agent Chat plugin. Regular expressions can be added, edited, and deleted from the Sensitive Data Handling module.

Regular Expressions

The base system of the Sensitive Data Handler comes with pre-defined regular expressions for credit/debit card numbers, social security numbers, and email addresses. When the Sensitive Data Handler detects a regular expression, it uses the defined masking pattern to mask sensitive data. To define your own regular expressions and patterns to mask other sensitive data, see Configure the Sensitive Data Handler. If a regular expression is not properly configured, the system may get stuck while attempting to match the regular expression with the message. To prevent the system from getting stuck, the system times out after one second.