diff --git a/backend/app/db/database.py b/backend/app/db/database.py
index 579fa8b..dae56ac 100644
--- a/backend/app/db/database.py
+++ b/backend/app/db/database.py
@@ -1,11 +1,15 @@
 from collections.abc import AsyncGenerator
 from contextlib import suppress
+from pathlib import Path
 
 from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import AsyncSession, async_sessionmaker, create_async_engine
 from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
 
 from app.core.config import settings
 
+# Ensure the data directory exists before SQLite tries to open the file
+Path(settings.sqlite_path).parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+
 engine = create_async_engine(
     f"sqlite+aiosqlite:///{settings.sqlite_path}",
     echo=False,
diff --git a/backend/data/.gitignore b/backend/data/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec5328c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/backend/data/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+*.db
+*.db-shm
+*.db-wal
+scan_config.json