A Proactive Approach to Preventing PII Data Leaks and Automating Privacy Compliance Workflows
About Us
HoundDog.ai helps organizations protect sensitive data from exposure and streamline compliance workflows by integrating data security and privacy controls at the code level from the very start. With its AI-powered code scanner, HoundDog.ai detects code logic suspected of handling sensitive data (e.g., PII, PIFI, and PHI), flags vulnerabilities where PII data is exposed in plaintext (in logs, files, and 3rd party systems) and automates the generation of sensitive datamaps and RoPA reports for GDPR compliance. HoundDog.ai supports popular programming languages and integrates with existing tools, CI pipelines and developer workflows.
Our Mission
At HoundDog.ai, our mission is to operationalize Zero Trust through data minimization—detecting and eliminating sensitive data risks early in development, before they can be exploited in production. We help security teams address unintentional developer mistakes that lead to excessive logging and PII oversharing across risky mediums, stay ahead of rapidly growing PII exposure risks in AI pipelines and systems, enforce privacy-by-design from day one, and support Assume Breach principles to reduce the blast radius of inevitable intrusions.
The Founding Team
Amjad Afanah
Amjad Afanah is a serial entrepreneur with a rich background in cybersecurity. He led his first company, DCHQ, a cloud management startup, to acquisition, and later founded APISec.ai, which developed one of the first API security scanners. Before founding HoundDog.ai, Amjad served as the VP of Product at Cyral, a data security platform that implements security controls on production data. His experience at Cyral, coupled with significant feedback from security and privacy teams frustrated by the prevalent reactive approach to data security and privacy—which often remains unaligned with evolving codebases—inspired him to start HoundDog.ai.
Joohwan Oh
Joohwan Oh is an experienced engineering leader skilled in both scaling services for millions of users and developing new software from scratch. Before joining HoundDog.ai, he was a founding engineer at Aktos, a FinTech startup focused on modernizing the accounts receivable management industry. Joohwan has also led key projects at prominent companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Instacart. Currently, he oversees the development of HoundDog.ai’s cloud platform and the essential AI workflows that significantly enhance our scanner’s accuracy and coverage.
Make Privacy-by-Design a Reality in Your SDLC
Shift Left on Privacy. Scan Code. Get Evidence-Based Data Maps. Prevent PII Leaks in Logs and Other Risky Mediums Early—Before Weeks of Remediation in Production.