A method, system and article of manufacture for protecting sensitive data in databases and, more particularly, for managing access to sensitive data in a database. One embodiment comprises receiving a query against the data in the database comprising at least (i) a result field specification, and (ii) a sorting instruction. The method further comprises retrieving a result set from the database, and filtering the retrieved result set on the basis of predefined filtering rules to remove selected data from a selected result field of at least one data record included with the retrieved result set. The filtered result set is sorted according to the sorting instruction to produce the sorted result set, whereby the sorting is done independently of the removed selected data so that the sorted result set places the at least one data record at a position which is non-indicative of a value of the removed selected data.