A: It’s not strictly necessary to hash or encrypt individual columns. We are following the highest recommendation guidelines for data protection standards by being fully encrypted and not publicly accessible through a restricted access environment. However, there are certain scenarios where column hashing or encryption can still be useful, as it preserves the data structure or categories in a manner of speaking.

For example, if you are presenting your project or sharing access to your project with someone else, encryption allows others to understand the graphs or continue to even work the data, such as downloading cleaned up tables, creating new visualizations, and performing statistical analysis. This can help minimize data exposure of both personal and sensitive columns while still enabling collaboration.