US Patent 10193953 Self describing configuration

Systems and methods are provided for self-describing configurations of cloud-based applications for data security providers monitoring communications between a client device and the applications. An application programming interface (API) can be provided that allows the data security provider to inspect entity objects used by the cloud-based application. Data entities can be marked to have protected fields. A token identifier can be generated by the data security provider and sent to the cloud-based application. The cloud-based application can insert the token identifier in communications between the application and a client device allowing the data security provider to protect sensitive data associated with the protected fields.