Both static and dynamic masking are irreversible and therefore applied to a copy of the data. The original data is not de-identified. In contrast, Tokenization de-identifies the original data in place. Only actors with access to the tokenization (symmetric) key can decrypt and read the original value.

By de-identifying the original data, tokenization removes the risk of losing sensitive (PII) information in case of a data breach. Tokenization also makes sharing data with 3rd parties easier, as the data is no longer considered sensitive.