DevTools

API Keys and Secrets Stay
On Your Machine.

Every day, developers paste API keys, database credentials, cloud secrets, and customer tokens into ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, without realizing it. Shield sits on your developers' machines and stops secrets from ever reaching an external AI model. No cloud. No vendor access. Just a local proxy that redacts sensitive data before it leaves your network.

Talk to Our Team See Secret Redaction in Action

Quick Answer

Shield for DevTools is a local desktop application that stops API keys, database credentials, JWT tokens, cloud secrets, and customer identifiers from ever leaving your developers' machines, before that data reaches GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI model. It runs on your existing machines, requires no cloud infrastructure, and helps DevTools companies meet SOC 2 and ISO 27001 requirements without changing how engineers use AI coding assistants.

84%

of developers use or plan to use AI tools

The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey of over 49,000 developers found that 84% are using or planning to use AI tools in their development workflow, up from 76% in 2024. More than half of professional developers use AI tools daily. Every prompt is a potential egress point for API keys, tokens, database credentials, and customer secrets.

Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025

Secrets

Hidden in AI prompts every day

Developers pasting config files, .env contents, debug logs, and error traces into AI assistants routinely expose live API keys, database passwords, cloud credentials, and internal infrastructure details. GitHub's secret scanning detected over 39 million secrets in 2024 alone, and AI prompts represent a new, unmonitored exfiltration vector that secret scanners in repos can't catch.

Source: GitHub Secret Scanning 2024 report

Zero

Secrets leave your machine with Shield

Shield runs locally on your developers' machines, no cloud processing, no vendor data access. API keys, database credentials, JWT tokens, and customer identifiers are redacted before they reach external AI providers. The redaction mapping stays on your machine, inside your organization's network boundary. Your secrets never leave your control.

Shield operates within your network boundary

Secrets in AI prompts are a SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance gap

When a developer pastes an API key, database connection string, or customer token into an AI prompt, that data leaves your security boundary and arrives at a third-party provider's servers. Under SOC 2 controls CC6.1 and CC6.6, organizations must implement logical access controls and external boundary protections, and that obligation doesn't disappear just because an engineer is using an AI coding assistant. Shield eliminates this vector entirely: secrets never leave your network, so they never create a compliance exposure.

Interactive Demo

What Secrets Look Like in AI Prompts

Three real-world scenarios where developers and support engineers send live secrets to AI models. Click each tab to see the raw prompt with exposed credentials, and how Shield redacts them before they leave your network.

Developer Pasting Config + API Keys into Copilot

A backend engineer uses GitHub Copilot Chat to generate a Stripe integration. They paste their .env.local file, containing live API keys, database URLs, and third-party service tokens, directly into the prompt.

Before Shield

Generate a Node.js function to create a Stripe checkout session. Here's my config: STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_live_51NxKj2LBd9xH3mWq8pR4tV7yA1cF6gJ0zB2nD5sK8wE3hL9mQ2rX5, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9j0k1l2m3n4o5p6, DATABASE_URL=postgresql://admin:ProdDB2024!@db.internal.acme.com:5432/production, SENDGRID_API_KEY=SG.abc123xyz789def456ghi012jkl345mno678, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY. Also, we use a Redis cache at redis://:SuperSecretCache2024@redis.internal:6379/0.

After Shield

Generate a Node.js function to create a Stripe checkout session. Here's my config: STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=[STRIPE_KEY], STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=[WEBHOOK_SECRET], DATABASE_URL=[DATABASE_URL], SENDGRID_API_KEY=[API_KEY], AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=[AWS_KEY_ID], AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=[AWS_SECRET]. Also, we use a Redis cache at [REDIS_URL].

Detected (7 matches)

Secret, API Keysk_live_51Nx...

Secret, Webhookwhsec_a1b2...

Secret, DB Credspostgresql://...

Secret, API KeySG.abc123...

Secret, CloudAKIAIOSFODNN7...

Secret, CloudwJalrXUtnF...

Secret, Cacheredis://...

Compliance

How Shield Maps to DevTools Security Standards

DevTools companies operate under SOC 2, ISO 27001, and OWASP LLM security standards. Shield's local proxy architecture provides a single technical control that supports compliance across all three, without adding cloud dependencies to your data governance scope.

Framework	Scope	Key Requirement	How Shield Helps
SOC 2	Service organization controls for DevTools/SaaS companies	CC6.1 and CC6.6 require logical access controls and external boundary protections. Organizations must prevent unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, including secrets inadvertently sent to external services by employees.	Redacts API keys, tokens, and customer data before prompts reach external AI providers. Audit logs provide cryptographic proof of every redaction event, verifiable by SOC 2 auditors.
ISO 27001	Information security management for technology organizations	Annex A controls A.5.15 (Access Control), A.8.8 (Management of Technical Vulnerabilities), and A.8.12 (Data Leakage Prevention) under ISO 27001:2022 require organizations to prevent unauthorized access and data leakage through technical controls.	Provides a technical control at the network boundary, secrets are intercepted and redacted before leaving the organization's information security perimeter, satisfying the data leakage prevention requirement.
OWASP LLM02	Sensitive Information Disclosure in LLM applications	OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications (2025) identifies Sensitive Information Disclosure as LLM02, the second most critical risk. Organizations must prevent PII, financial details, health records, confidential business data, security credentials, and legal documents from reaching LLM providers.	Directly addresses OWASP LLM02 by detecting and redacting secrets at the proxy layer, before they reach the LLM. Covers all OWASP-identified categories: PII, credentials, confidential business data, and internal infrastructure details.

Architecture

Secrets Never Leave Your Developers' Machines

Shield runs as a local proxy on your developers' machines. When an engineer sends a prompt to Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude, Shield intercepts it, detects and redacts all API keys, credentials, tokens, and internal identifiers, and only then forwards the clean prompt to the external LLM. The redaction mapping stays on your machine, inside your organization's network boundary.

Local Installation

Install Shield on any Mac, Windows, or Linux machine. No cloud infrastructure, no vendor data access, no secrets leave your network.

One Environment Variable

Set SHIELD_PROXY_URL and every AI call from that machine flows through Shield automatically. Zero code changes to your IDE, CLI tools, or CI/CD pipeline.

Tamper-Evident Audit Logs

Every redaction event is logged with a cryptographic hash. Prove to SOC 2 auditors and security teams exactly what secrets were caught and when.

Configurable Policies

Choose which secret types to redact, API keys, DB credentials, cloud secrets. Add custom patterns for your company's internal identifiers. Run in audit-only mode first to see what your team is pasting.

FAQ

Common Questions

Yes. Shield operates at the network proxy layer. It sits between your machine and the AI provider, not inside any specific IDE or tool. Whether your team uses GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Cody, or any other AI coding assistant, Shield intercepts the outbound request and redacts secrets before they leave your network. No plugins, no IDE integrations, no workflow changes required.

Shield comes with detection patterns for the most common secret types developers accidentally paste into AI prompts: API keys (Stripe, AWS, SendGrid, OpenAI, Anthropic, Twilio, and 200+ other providers), database connection strings (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis), cloud credentials (AWS access keys, GCP service accounts, Azure connection strings), JWT tokens, SSH private keys, and custom patterns you define. Our filter packs also catch internal hostnames, IP addresses, and customer identifiers, the data that turns a debugging session into a data exposure incident.

SOC 2 controls CC6.1 and CC6.6 require organizations to implement logical access controls and external boundary protections for sensitive information. When your engineers paste API keys and customer data into AI tools, that data crosses your security boundary and arrives at a third party's servers, creating a gap in your SOC 2 control environment. Shield closes this gap: secrets are redacted locally before they leave your machine, so the AI provider never receives them. Your SOC 2 auditor can verify this with Shield's tamper-evident audit logs.

Secrets managers protect secrets at rest and in deployment pipelines. They ensure credentials aren't hardcoded in repos or config files. But they don't stop a developer from copying a secret from their .env file, a dashboard, or a 1Password entry and pasting it into an AI prompt. Shield addresses the human-in-the-loop gap: it catches secrets in real time at the network boundary, regardless of where the developer retrieved them from. The two tools are complementary, secrets managers protect the source, Shield protects the egress.

Shield installs on any Mac, Windows, or Linux machine in under two minutes. For team-wide deployment, your IT or platform engineering team can push Shield via MDM, configuration management, or a simple install script. Every engineer gets the same policy configuration, and all redaction events are logged with cryptographic hashes. Shield supports enterprise configuration management, so you can deploy consistent secret protection across every developer laptop, without touching a single IDE, CLI tool, or CI/CD pipeline.

Shield is designed to selectively redact secrets within prompts, not to block code sharing entirely. We believe developers should be able to use AI tools to write better code. They just shouldn't expose API keys, tokens, and customer data in the process. Shield's filter packs are configurable: you can start with a minimal set (API keys and database credentials only), run in audit-only mode to see what your team is actually pasting, then tighten policies incrementally. You can also add custom patterns for company-specific secret formats, internal hostname patterns, or project IDs.

Shield for Financial Services

Keep account numbers, SSNs, and portfolio data safe under PCI DSS and GLBA.

LLM API Key Management

A complete checklist for managing API keys and secrets across your AI toolchain.

SOC 2 for AI: What Auditors Actually Check

An interactive guide to SOC 2 controls that apply when your team uses AI tools.

Ready to Keep Your Secrets Off AI Servers?

Shield installs in minutes. Your team's API keys, database credentials, and customer tokens stay on your developers' machines, where SOC 2, ISO 27001, and your customers expect them to be.

Talk to Our Team How Shield Works

Last updated: July 16, 2026

API Keys and Secrets StayOn Your Machine.