Use Cases
The Immuta Request app is designed to bridge the gap between data discovery and secure access. Depending on your organization's maturity and existing tooling, you can implement the Request app in one of two ways:
Best for: Organizations with an existing enterprise catalog (e.g., Alation, Collibra) who want to embed Immuta's request workflow directly into that experience.
User flow: Discovery happens in your catalog; requests, determinations, and provisioning happen in Immuta.
Best for: Organizations looking for a centralized, curated discovery experience hosted entirely within the Immuta UI.
User flow: Discovery, requests, determinations, and fulfillment all happen within Immuta.
Identify use cases
Before technical setup, identify where the Request app can solve immediate bottlenecks. Focus on business issues like the following:
High volumes of access requests currently handled through tickets or manual grants
Teams with time-bound access needs (e.g., contractors or short-term projects)
Datasets already protected by policies (e.g., masking PII) that could be safely shared more broadly.
Use cases where users need temporary, scoped unmasking of sensitive fields, rather than full unrestricted access.
Over-provisioned access that can be reduced through more precise access controls.
Diverse datasets requiring custom access workflows (e.g., the approval flow for HR is very different from Finance or Marketing).
Engaged teams ready to participate in streamlined access workflows.
Example use cases
Enable temporary unmasking for investigative or support use cases
Certain teams—such as customer support, fraud, or compliance—occasionally need to view sensitive fields in clear text to resolve specific issues or investigations. Granting permanent, broad unmasked access increases risk and administrative overhead. With Immuta’s Request app, users can request time-bound, scoped unmasking of columns at the time that they need them. Requests are routed through the appropriate approvers, automatically expire, and are fully audited, allowing teams to do their jobs effectively while maintaining strict data protection controls.
Automate contractor access with built-in expiration
Contractors often receive manual, open-ended access that’s hard to track and revoke. The Request app streamlines publishing data sets, simplifies requests, enforces time-bound access with auto-expiration, and gives governance teams clear visibility into who has access to what and when.
Streamline approvals for reoccurring finance reporting requests
Regional analysts frequently request access to financial summary tables for quarterly reporting, creating repetitive work for approvers. With Immuta's Request app, access requests are routed directly to designated approvers, accelerating turnaround times while maintaining oversight through fully auditable workflows.
Automate recertification for highly sensitive data
Access to highly sensitive datasets often requires periodic recertification to ensure only authorized users retain access. Manual recertification processes are time-consuming and error-prone. Immuta enforces time-bound access with auto-expiration, prompting users to re-request access when needed and giving governance teams full visibility into approvals and expirations.
The following are not recommended use cases:
You are trying to share and/or monetize data externally (unless you own the data platform those external consumers leverage to query the data).
You want to automate access completely, doing away with manual approvals. You can accomplish this using data governance policies in the Govern app.
Start from your data catalog
Choose this path if your users already have a devoted catalog for finding data and you want to leverage Immuta as the invisible engine that handles approvals and provisioning. You'll experience the following benefits from this path:
Unified experience: Users don't have to learn a new tool to find data.
Intuitive requests: Consumers request access to the actual data (e.g., data products, assets or masking exceptions) rather than cryptic database roles.
Scalable provisioning: Approvals trigger policy-based grants that provision access natively in the data platform.
See the Walkthrough guide for details on how to set up Immuta with your data catalog.
Use Immuta as a marketplace
Choose this path if you want a dedicated, curated environment where data product managers can publish data products and consumers can browse a clean, business-friendly storefront. You'll experience the following benefits from this path:
Curated metadata: Show only the most relevant, high-quality data products.
Cross-platform visibility: Users can browse products that span multiple different data platforms (e.g., Snowflake and Databricks) in one list.
Branded experience: Customize the marketplace with your organization's logo and colors to build internal trust.
See the Use Immuta as a marketplace guide for details on how to set up Immuta as a marketplace.
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