Tool Overview:
Piiano

About Piiano

Piiano is a data protection service designed to secure sensitive customer data through encryption, tokenization, and access controls. The platform's core component, Piiano Vault, functions as a specialized infrastructure for storing and protecting personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data types. Unlike traditional databases that prioritize data accessibility, Piiano Vault emphasizes data security through encryption and strict access controls.

What does Piiano do?

The platform provides a secure backend infrastructure for collecting and protecting sensitive customer data in applications. At its foundation, Piiano Vault implements field-level encryption, allowing organizations to encrypt specific data fields rather than entire databases. This granular approach enables businesses to maintain normal operations with non-sensitive data while applying enhanced security measures to PII and other critical information.

Piiano's architecture separates control and data functionality into two distinct components. The Control component manages collection schemas and configuration, while the Data component handles creation, updating, and access operations. This separation enables the platform to optimize for both high-throughput data operations and consistent control transactions. The system has been benchmarked to handle up to 60,000 requests per second under proper configuration.

Key technical features include strong encryption with anti-tampering technology, granular access controls to prevent unauthorized data access, and comprehensive audit logging of all data operations. The platform supports various deployment options, including cloud-based, on-premises, and container-based implementations. For development teams, Piiano provides REST APIs and SDKs for multiple programming languages to integrate data protection capabilities into existing applications.

What makes Piiano different?

A significant differentiator of Piiano is its approach to data security through isolation. Rather than relying solely on database-level encryption, the platform implements HSM-like isolation and zero trust primitives. This means that even if an application or database is compromised, the encrypted data remains protected since decryption keys are managed separately and access is strictly controlled.

The platform includes built-in features for key rotation, data retention policies, and privacy compliance. Its metadata caching mechanism allows for efficient operation while maintaining eventual consistency across distributed deployments. For organizations dealing with regulatory requirements, Piiano Vault supports HIPAA compliance and includes features for handling Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR) and Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) requirements.

Use cases and industries

Piiano serves organizations that need to protect sensitive customer data while maintaining operational efficiency. Common use cases include securing social security numbers, credit card data, healthcare information, and other forms of PII. The platform's architecture makes it particularly suitable for organizations with high-volume data processing requirements or those operating in regulated industries.

The service offers different tiers of functionality, from basic PII protection with limited records and properties to enterprise-level implementations supporting custom data types, unlimited API calls, and advanced features like payment tokenization. Organizations can choose between self-hosted deployments for maximum control or fully managed cloud instances for easier maintenance.

It all begins with the cloud, where applications are accessible to everyone. Therefore, a user or an attacker makes no difference per se. Technically, encrypting all data at rest and in transit might seem like a comprehensive approach, but these methods are not enough anymore. For cloud hosted applications, data-at-rest encryption does not provide the coverage one might expect.