As a GDPR specialist, I’m auditing our Data Actions. We have an action that queries our CRM to retrieve a customer’s national ID (similar to an SSN) to verify their identity in the IVR.
I noticed that if a developer turns on ‘Execution Details’ for the Data Action during troubleshooting, the entire JSON response containing the plain-text ID is written to the Genesys Cloud logs. Furthermore, the variable that holds this ID is visible in the Architect Execution History if tracing is enabled. How can we configure the Data Action or Architect to ‘Mask’ specific JSON fields so this highly sensitive PII never hits the Genesys Cloud log storage?
We had to solve this exact issue for 800 agents here in Japan.
Inside the Data Action configuration, on the ‘Contracts’ tab where you define your Output schema, you need to click the gear icon next to the sensitive field (e.g., nationalId). There is a checkbox called ‘Secure’. If you check that box, Genesys Cloud will treat the variable as a secure string. It will automatically mask it with asterisks (***) in the Data Action test UI, the execution logs, and anywhere it is referenced in Architect.
is exactly right about the ‘Secure’ checkbox on the contract.
However, be aware of a huge caveat when passing that secure data around! If you map that secure Data Action output to a standard Task.String variable in Architect, it will lose its secure status. You MUST map it to a Task.SecureString variable in Architect. Also, you cannot use secure strings in standard text-to-speech blocks; you have to use the specific ‘Play Secure Data’ block if you want the IVR to read it back.
If you use that Secure String to do a screen-pop to the agent’s desktop, it will remain masked. The agent won’t be able to see it unless your custom CRM widget specifically decrypts it. This is usually what you want for compliance, but it catches a lot of developers off guard when they expect the screen-pop payload to contain the raw data!
This is exactly why I push for IaC over point-and-click for these scenarios. Relying on developers to remember to check a “Secure” box in the UI is a compliance nightmare waiting to happen. One missed checkbox during a hotfix and you’re leaking PII to logs again.
If you are using the Genesys Cloud CLI or Terraform provider, you can enforce this at the deployment level. When defining your Data Action contract outputs in Terraform, you explicitly set the secure attribute. It’s not optional; it’s code.
Here is how that looks in your terraform config:
resource "genesyscloud_dataaction" "crm_verify" {
# ... other config ...
contract {
output {
name = "nationalId"
type = "string"
secure = true # Enforced here, not in the UI
}
# ... other outputs ...
}
}
By baking secure = true into your state files, you eliminate human error. If someone tries to deploy a change that removes this flag, your CI/CD pipeline should flag it as a breaking change or fail the compliance check before it ever hits production.
Also, don’t forget to validate your Architect flows in the same pipeline. Use the GC CLI to export the flow, parse the JSON, and assert that any variable receiving data from a secure source is typed as SecureString. If you see a String type there, fail the build.
Stop trusting the UI. Trust the code. Your auditors will thank you when they can’t find a single unmasked SSN in your logs because the configuration was immutable and enforced by automation.