IRI Announces Version 6 of the DarkShield Data Masking Tool
Latest Release Adds REST API, More Masking Functions and Data Source Support
August 6, 2025 - Melbourne, FL (EIN Presswire) - Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc., the 47-year-old pioneer in big data management and data-centric security software, has announced the next new version of its DarkShield data masking package for protecting PII in popular data sources on-premise and in the cloud. DarkShield V6 expands significantly on the features in V5 announced at the end of 2024, particularly those involved in its built-in data classification and discovery processes.
First launched in 2017, IRI DarkShield was one of the world’s first unstructured data masking tools, and the first to target personally identifiable information (PII) in raw and semi-structured text files, PDF and MS Office documents, Parquet and image files. Since then DarkShield has been widely adopted by financial, healthcare, and government users because, per Bloor Research, it can obfuscate data in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured sources the same way, preserving referential integrity in targets enterprise-wide through consistently applied deterministic masking rules.
DarkShield V6 is a self-hosted software package which operates on premise or in the customer’s cloud environment; i.e., it is not a SaaS. Its GUI, API, and CLI components run on Windows and Linux systems ranging from bare metal to VMs to containers. DarkShield can be licensed standalone between US $6K and $60K per hostname depending on data volume, or free inside the IRI Voracity data management platform -- which includes many other components, and is licensed by subscription or for perpetual use.
New features of DarkShield V6 include:
- Single-endpoint REST API (in addition to RPC APIs), to support load balancing, etc.
- Optional AI-powered signature detection and redaction for documents
- Front-end support for searching and masking CosmosDB, Redis and Splunk
- Combined pseudonymization and PII fabrication function
- Format-preserving scramble function
- Purpose built-wizards for HL7, X12 and FHIR (JSON) PHI discovery and de-ID
- Enhanced PHI discovery in DICOM image pixels
- Additional JSON log file compatible with the upcoming CoSort 11 "Operational Governance System"
- AI-powered schema data classification to facilitate RDB searching and masking jobs
- Improved constraint handling and speed improvement in RDB update masking
According to IRI SVP David Friedland, “To have this many innovations within 7 months of the prior release is a testimony to the demand in the data masking market, and the compliance-driven use cases for DarkShield in particular. IRI remains committed to its pioneering role and leadership in the industry, and looks forward to more innovations for DarkShield in 2026, including state-of-the-art AI solutions for handwriting and facial recognition, masking of PII in audio files, more NER models for street addresses, and more.”
About IRI DarkShield
Like its sister products in the IRI Voracity platform Data Protector suite – FieldShield and CellShield EE, plus RowGen for test data synthesis – DarkShield is used worldwide for data privacy law compliance, data breach nullification, and test data creation. All of these tools are front-ended in the IRI Workbench GUI, built on Eclipse, where they share PII data class definitions, data masking rules, data source connections, Git integration, job scheduling, DBA facilities, and more.
Press Contact
Alyssa Ardhya, IRI
321-777-8889, ext. 211
news@iri.com
