Field masking is a technique that hides or obscures part of the information in a data field, such as a password, credit card number, or social security number. Field masking can be used to protect sensitive or confidential data from unauthorized access or disclosure, while still allowing authorized users to view or verify the data.

Field masking should be implemented to authenticate employees who call in remotely by allowing the help desk staff to view partial information about employees, because field masking would:

Enable the help desk staff to verify the identity of the employees by asking them to provide some characters or digits from their data fields, such as their employee ID or email address.

Prevent the help desk staff from viewing the full information about employees, which may be considered sensitive and subject to privacy regulations or policies.

Reduce the risk of data leakage, theft, or misuse by limiting the exposure of sensitive data to only those who need it.