Datadog's Runtime Prioritization Engine (RPE) addresses two persistent cloud security challenges: identifying who owns a security finding and determining which findings matter most. Rather than relying on static metadata and manually maintained inventories, RPE continuously analyzes live telemetry data using AI-powered capabilities. The Ownership Agent infers resource ownership by combining signals like owner tags, cloud audit logs, CODEOWNERS files, naming conventions, and container metadata into a ranked evidence model. For critical asset identification, RPE automatically builds and maintains a 'crown jewels' inventory by analyzing runtime observability data — detecting sensitive data in APM spans, logs, and API traffic, and mapping service dependency centrality. Both ownership assignments and crown jewel classifications can be reviewed and overridden by security teams. The feature is generally available as part of Datadog Cloud Security.
