Kontrollgrep

Kontrollgrep is a concept and family of command-line tools that extend the traditional grep by adding built-in access control, auditing, and secure data handling to text search. It is designed for environments where governance, privacy, and traceability are important, such as regulated industries, government archives, and security operations centers. The core idea is to preserve the familiar search capabilities of grep while introducing policy-driven restrictions and logs.

Key features include pattern matching with standard regular expressions, fixed-string search, and support for multiple backends or data sources. Access control is enforced through per-user or per-role policies that govern which files, directories, or streams can be searched and which results can be viewed. Auditing records are generated for each query, capturing user, timestamp, search pattern, targets, and the scope of the operation, with options for tamper-evident logs. Output controls enable redaction, masking, or conditional display of sensitive fields in search results. Kontrollgrep supports streaming and batch modes, enabling searches over files, log streams, and network inputs, and aims to optimize performance with parallel processing and incremental indexing where applicable.

Architecture typically comprises a core search engine, a policy and authentication module, an output moderator, and pluggable backends for file systems, cloud storage, and log aggregators. It strives to maintain a grep-like user experience, including familiar command-line flags and exit codes, while exposing additional flags for policy, auditing, and redaction.

In practice, kontrollgrep is used to perform compliant text searches without exposing restricted data, balancing efficiency with governance. Related tools include grep, ripgrep, and awk, each serving broader or more specialized use cases.