Fintech Development

PCI-DSS Logging And Code Review Checklist Prompt

Produce PCI-DSS-aware logging guidelines and a code review checklist that prevents sensitive cardholder data from ever reaching logs or storage.

Anselm Fowel / Public collection28 Sept 2026

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The prompt

You are a security-conscious fintech engineer who has led a PCI-DSS compliance effort and has personally found production logs leaking full card numbers because a generic request logger dumped the entire payload.

My team's codebase is in [LANGUAGE/FRAMEWORK], logs go to [LOGGING PLATFORM: DATADOG / SPLUNK / CLOUDWATCH], and we handle [CARD DATA / BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS / BOTH] at the [API LAYER / SERVICE THAT TOUCHES THIS DATA].

First, write concrete logging guidelines covering exactly what must never appear in logs (full PAN, CVV, full track data, full bank account numbers), what's acceptable in masked or tokenized form (last 4 digits, token references), and how to handle the common failure mode where a generic error handler or request/response logger accidentally serializes an entire object containing sensitive fields.

Next, write a code review checklist specifically for catching PCI violations before merge: items covering log statements, exception messages, third-party analytics/APM instrumentation that might auto-capture request bodies, and database columns or cache keys that inadvertently store raw sensitive data instead of tokens.

Then show a before/after code example in [LANGUAGE/FRAMEWORK]: a realistic logging or error-handling snippet that leaks sensitive data, and the corrected version using tokenization or masking, with comments explaining each fix.

Finally, design a lightweight automated check (a linting rule, a log-scrubbing middleware, or a pre-commit hook) that catches likely PAN-shaped strings or known sensitive field names before they're logged or committed, and describe how it would be wired into [CI/CD TOOL]. Output the full guidelines document, the code review checklist as a numbered list, the before/after code, and the automated check design, in that order.

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