Masking/Partial Hiding of Field Data

[Anonymous]

Hi Marketo Community:

I work for a higher-ed institution, and part of our online application requests the prospect to provide their SSN. The form would be hosted on a secure site, but I have a question, that I haven't been able to find an answer to.

So here goes, is it possible to mask or hide the data in a field from marketo users? As an example, the form asks for SSN, the prospect inputs 123-45-6789, but when viewed in the prospects record, the field shows XXX-XX-6789?

Since we also collect, date of birth, address and other PII, I'm worried about (1) hacking of the system and (2) someone internally having access to that information, and when it syncs to SFDC.

Any suggestions or thoughts anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Kirk

[Grant_Booth]

Hi Kirk,

You may want to check with your security and legal team on this. In my opinion, you should not use Marketo to store information that is that sensitive. No SSN, credit card numbers, etc. I'm not an attorney but there's likely laws which are very specific about where and how information like that can be stored.

It's not that Marketo isn't secure (it is) - it's that there are features in Marketo which, if used incorrectly (like form prefill and progressive profiling for example), could risk information leaking. I recommend having a web developer create a custom form and then use one of Marketo's APIs or a server-side form post to send the information which is relevant to Marketo.

APIs:

Marketo REST APIs: Lead, List, Activity, Campaign Objects » Marketo Developers

Server-Side Form Post:

http://developers.marketo.com/blog/server-side-form-post/

Someone's SSN isn't relative to marketing, so I recommend keeping it out of Marketo. Have that information stored in as few places as possible. If you need a unique identifier for someone, I recommend relying the ID field in Marketo or the ID field in your CRM.

Grant

[Edward_Masson]

As Grant explains, you do not want to use Marketo forms for that type of information. When syncing with SFDC, the user comes back to a form with that field again will pre-populate with the value that gets synced to SFDC.

You should have a secure section where people can login to their account and provide their SSN.

Think of Marketo forms for only capturing lead/marketing info not personnel information.

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, that's been my argument all along, but I needed a more eloquent way of saying this, and you two did the trick.

Kirk