Sensitive data leaks through responses
SSNs, salaries, and PII slip into API payloads because masking is an afterthought bolted onto controllers.
Ihawu
Stop leaking sensitive fields. Ihawu masks them at the serialization boundary — declaratively, fail-closed, and across your stack. Your controllers stay clean.
Ihawu (Ndebele for shield) guards the data your API returns. It is a lightweight Policy Enforcement Point: you annotate a field, define a policy, and every response is masked for the caller who receives it — enforced as the response is serialized, and failing closed rather than leaking on error.
The problem
Section titled “The problem”Masking logic sprawls
if (role == ...) checks scatter across handlers, DTOs, and mappers — hard to audit, easy to
get wrong.
Reinvented per framework
Every service and platform rolls its own masking, with no shared, testable enforcement layer.
Why Ihawu
Section titled “Why Ihawu”Declarative
Annotate a resource with @IhawuResource and describe rules as policy — no masking code in your
controllers.
Fail-closed by default
No verified identity? Ihawu emits {} rather than leaking. Security is the default, not an
opt-in.
Framework-agnostic core
A pure core with pluggable adapters: Spring Boot today, Kotlin Multiplatform next.
Your policy source, your call
Static rules in config, or dynamic ones from a database or OPA via a simple SPI. Ihawu enforces — it never usurps your decision engine.
Adapters
Section titled “Adapters”Spring Boot Starter — available
Drop the starter on the classpath and Ihawu auto-configures masking into your Jackson pipeline. Get started →
Kotlin Multiplatform — coming soon
The same enforcement model for KMP projects. On the roadmap for an upcoming release.