Zero Trust · Identity · PII Redaction

One attack surface at a time, from the Identity pillar outward.

Practitioner research by Tom Stacy, CISSP®. It started with authentication attack chains — the Identity pillar of Zero Trust. It continues across all five pillars, with one thread running through everything: where PII and secrets actually leak, and how to stop them.

The Zero Trust model, one pillar at a time

CISA's Zero Trust Maturity Model frames security across five core technology pillars. This site builds the practitioner view of each — how they break, and where PII redaction fits inside them.

PILLAR 02

Devices

Endpoint telemetry, MDM data, and device logs — and the PII they carry into your data lake.

Devices →
PILLAR 03

Networks

DNS, NetFlow, email gateway logs. Traffic metadata is identity data too.

Networks →
PILLAR 04

Applications

API payloads, support tickets, RAG pipelines, LLM prompts. The new redaction frontier.

Applications →
PILLAR 05

Data

DLP, masking, tokenization, verified-clean redaction. The crown jewel and the final wall.

Data →
CROSS-CUTTING

Visibility & Automation

SIEM pipelines, SOAR playbooks, policy-as-code. Where redaction rules become systemic.

Visibility & Automation →

FlawedToken — the open lab

A purpose-built vulnerable OAuth 2.0 environment for security researchers. Every misconfiguration is deliberate, documented, and toggleable. One command, no cloud accounts, no paperwork.

github.com/tstacy/flawedtoken

Explore the lab

The redaction thread

PII redaction isn't a Data-pillar problem. It threads through every pillar — identity artifacts in auth logs, secrets in device telemetry, customer data in LLM prompts. This site documents the whole surface, and ShroudCloud builds the detection engine for it.

PillarWhere PII hidesRedaction play
IdentityAuth logs, SSO audit, session recordsJWTs, OAuth codes, bearer tokens
DevicesEndpoint telemetry, MDM inventoryDevice logs scrubbed before the lake
NetworksDNS, NetFlow, mail gateway logsIdentifiers stripped from metadata
ApplicationsAPI payloads, tickets, LLM promptsShroud before the model sees it
DataDocuments, databases, DLP pipelinesVerified-clean export with audit trail