PII Catalog Sidecar Injection is a method to attach real-time detection and classification of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) into any running service. It works without modifying core application code. You run a sidecar container alongside your app. It intercepts data streams, scans payloads, and pushes matches into a centralized PII catalog. No downtime. No redeploy.
The sidecar model uses namespace isolation and lightweight network hooks. It can watch HTTP requests, gRPC messages, Kafka topics, or any structured/unstructured transport within the service mesh. As classified records are detected—names, emails, IP addresses, account IDs—they’re tagged, normalized, and indexed in the catalog. This enables instant queries across sources and precise compliance reporting.
The injection process is minimal: provision the sidecar image, point it at your catalog API endpoint, mount a configuration that defines match rules and data sources. Its scanning engine runs continuously, emitting structured findings in JSON. You can feed those directly into audit systems, alert pipelines, or masking services.