Intelligent and reversible data masking of computing environment information shared with external systems

A method comprising:

• obtaining, by a masking agent, collected data of a computing system that is to be shared with an analytics component for analysis, the collected data including information associated with a functioning or configuration of components of the computing system;
• parsing, by the masking agent, the collected data to identify sensitive information and contextual information of the computing system, wherein identifying the sensitive information includes a machine-learning process determining whether any unmodified value of the collected data constitutes a type of information specified by an end user as a subset of the sensitive information to mask;
• masking, by the masking agent, the collected data by replacing the sensitive information with an anonymized value and retaining the contextual information, the retained contextual information is used to derive relationships between components of the computing system;
• retaining, by the masking agent, the sensitive information by storing the sensitive information in a database, the stored sensitive information associated with the anonymized value;
• sharing, by the masking agent, the masked data and the retained contextual information including the anonymized values with the analytics component for analysis of the functioning of the computing system using the derived relationship between the components of the computer system;
• receiving, by the masking agent, an analysis report referencing the anonymized value, in response to the analytics component performing the analysis of the functioning of the computing system;
• anonymized value with the associated sensitive information retrieved from the database;
• and sharing, by the masking agent, the unmasked analysis report with the computing system.

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer-readable program code embodied therein to be executed by one or more processors, the program code including instructions to:

• obtain, by a masking agent, collected data of a computing system that is to be shared with an analytics component for analysis, the collected data including information associated with a functioning or configuration of components of the computing system;
• parse, by the masking agent, the collected data to identify sensitive information and contextual information of the computing system, wherein identifying the sensitive information includes a machine-learning process determining whether any unmodified value of the collected data constitutes a type of information specified by an end user as a subset of the sensitive information to mask;
• mask, by the masking agent, the collected data by replacing the sensitive information with anonymized values and retaining the contextual information, the retained contextual information is used to derive relationships between components of the computing system;
• retain, by the masking agent, the sensitive information by storing the sensitive information in a database, the stored sensitive information associated with the anonymized values;
• share, by the masking agent, the masked data and the retained contextual information including the anonymized values with the analytics component for analysis of the functioning of the computing system using the derived relationship between the components of the computer system;
• receive, by the masking agent, an analysis report referencing the anonymized values, in response to the analytics component performing the analysis of the functioning of the computing system;
• anonymized value with the associated sensitive information retrieved from the database;
• and share, by the masking agent, the unmasked analysis report with the computing system.