Patent attributes
A method for protecting information from databases includes a web application firewall and a database activity monitor. According to one aspect, a web gateway receives a request from a client device and provides the request to an application server to query a database. The web gateway receives sensitive data information describing requested data output by the database. The sensitive data information may include, for example, hints for detecting a type or structure of sensitive data output by the database. Additionally, the web gateway receives response data from the application server. The web gateway identifies sensitive data within the response data based on the sensitive data information. The web gateway protects the sensitive data to be provided to the client device using one or more data protection operations, which may include alerts, blocking policies, masking, or anomaly detection using machine learning algorithms.