An AI-driven code scanning tool aims to adopt a proactive, shift-left approach for safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations. The rapid evolution of product development often surpasses the capacity of privacy teams, necessitating frequent updates to outdated data maps, which can significantly burden their workload. With HoundDog.ai’s advanced code scanner, vulnerabilities that traditional SAST scanners might miss can be continuously identified, especially those exposing sensitive data in plaintext through various channels like logs, files, tokens, cookies, or external systems. It provides critical insights and remediation techniques, such as the removal of sensitive data, implementation of masking or obfuscation, or substitution of PII with UUIDs. Users receive timely alerts when new data elements are added, categorized by their sensitivity levels, helping to prevent unauthorized product changes from being released, thus mitigating potential privacy breaches. By automating these processes, the scanner effectively reduces the reliance on manual methods, which are often riddled with errors. This innovative solution not only enhances security but also streamlines workflow for privacy teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives.