IntroductionWhy Protecto

Why Protecto

The common data protection problems that Protecto solves, and what makes its approach different from alternatives.

Common problems without Protecto

Most teams run into the same issues when handling sensitive data:

ProblemWhat typically goes wrong
Manual maskingHard-coded regexes break and miss edge cases
Inconsistent tokensSame value masked differently across systems
GenAI leakagePrompts and responses accidentally expose PII
Compliance pressureNo clear audit trail or retention controls
PerformanceHeavy privacy tooling slows down core services

What Protecto does differently

Protecto provides centralized, deterministic tokenization with APIs fast enough for real-time use and flexible enough for batch processing.

  • Auto-detect unknown PII in free-form text — no pre-labeling required
  • Consistent tokens — the same value always produces the same token when using the same token type, enabling joins, analytics, and comparisons
  • Controlled unmasking — you decide who can unmask, and under which policy
  • Async APIs — handle large payloads without timeouts
  • Built-in toxicity scoring — protect GenAI workflows from harmful content

Where Protecto fits

Protecto is designed to sit at data boundaries — wherever sensitive data enters or leaves your system:

You call the Mask API on input, work with tokens internally, and call the Unmask API only when the original value is genuinely needed by an authorized workflow.