Authentication is no longer a hard problem
Cognito was built when implementing auth was genuinely complex. Today, a developer can scaffold a complete authentication system — email/password registration, Google and Microsoft SSO, JWT sessions, password reset flows — in an afternoon using AI coding assistants and well-documented libraries. That’s exactly how production systems are built today. The auth layer is glue code. The hard problems are elsewhere: how do you encrypt PII at rest, tokenize sensitive fields, track consent, handle data subject requests, and prove compliance to an auditor? Cognito doesn’t solve any of those. Databunker Pro does.What you get with Databunker Pro that Cognito can’t offer
Databunker Pro replaces Cognito’s user directory with a privacy-first PII vault and adds an entire compliance layer on top:- PII Vault — AES-256 per-record encryption with secure hash-based search indexes
- Tokenization engine — UUID and format-preserving tokens (Luhn-valid credit card tokens, integers, timestamps)
- Consent management — track legal basis, user agreements, and processing operations for GDPR/DPDP Act
- DPO portal — built-in interface for Data Protection Officers to handle access, erasure, and portability requests
- Audit trail — every API call logged with encrypted PII context
- Multi-tenancy — native row-level isolation in PostgreSQL
- Record versioning — full version history for every user record
- Auto-expiration — sliding and absolute TTLs for automatic data deletion
- Fuzzy search — search encrypted records without decrypting the database
- Shamir key sharing — master key split across multiple custodians for recovery
- Self-hosted — deploy on any cloud, on-premises, or in your customer’s region
Comparison table
| Capability | Databunker Pro | AWS Cognito |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | PII vault, tokenization, consent & DPO portal | Authentication & user directory |
| Deployment | Self-hosted (Docker, Kubernetes), any cloud or on-prem | AWS only |
| PII encryption | AES-256 per-record, FIPS 140-2 compliant | AWS-managed KMS (shared) |
| Tokenization | UUID + format-preserving tokens | None |
| Data minimization | Built-in — apps store only tokens | Not supported |
| Consent management | Built-in legal basis & agreement tracking | None |
| DPO portal | Built-in | None |
| Audit trail | Field-level, every API call | CloudTrail (API-level only) |
| Format-preserving tokenization | Credit cards (Luhn-valid), integers, timestamps | None |
| Multi-tenancy | Native row-level isolation (PostgreSQL) | Separate user pools |
| Record versioning | Built-in | None |
| Right to erasure (GDPR Art. 17) | Single API call | Manual cleanup |
| DPDP Act / GDPR / HIPAA / SOC 2 | Built-in compliance controls | Shared responsibility model |
| Vendor lock-in | None | Tied to AWS |
| Fuzzy search on encrypted data | Supported | None |
| Shamir key sharing | Master key split for recovery | AWS KMS only |
| Data residency | Any region, on-premises, customer-hosted | AWS regions only |
| Bulk operations | Bulk tokenization & export via API | None |
| Record auto-expiration | Sliding and absolute TTLs | Refresh token TTL only |
Code examples
How Cognito stores PII (the problem)
With Cognito, PII lives inside AWS as user attributes. It’s accessible via API, visible in the AWS console, included in exports, and you have no control over per-record encryption:How Databunker Pro stores PII (the solution)
With Databunker Pro, your application database never contains PII. You store a safe UUID token and retrieve the real data only when needed:Format-preserving credit card tokenization
This is something Cognito has no concept of. Databunker Pro can tokenize a real credit card number into a Luhn-valid fake that passes format validation in downstream systems:tokenbase passes Luhn checks and format validation — but maps to no real card. Your legacy systems keep working without ever seeing real card numbers.