Immuta manages access to Snowflake tables by administering Snowflake row access policies and column masking policies on those tables, allowing users to query tables directly in Snowflake while dynamic policies are enforced.

Getting started

This getting started guide outlines how to integrate your Snowflake account with Immuta.

How-to guides

• Configure a Snowflake integration: Configure the Snowflake integration.

• Edit or remove an existing integration: Manage integration settings or delete your existing Snowflake integration.

• Integration settings:

  • Enable Snowflake table grants: Enable Snowflake table grants and configure the Snowflake role prefix.

  • Use Snowflake data sharing with Immuta: Use Snowflake data sharing with table grants or project workspaces.

  • Snowflake low row access policy mode: Enable Snowflake low row access policy mode.

  • Snowflake lineage tag propagation: Configure your Snowflake integration to automatically apply tags added to a Snowflake table to its descendant data source columns in Immuta.

Reference guides

• Snowflake integration reference guide: This reference guide describes the design and features of the Snowflake integration.

• Snowflake table grants: Snowflake table grants simplifies the management of privileges in Snowflake when using Immuta. Instead of manually granting users access to tables registered in Immuta, you allow Immuta to manage privileges on your Snowflake tables and views according to subscription policies. This guide describes the components of Snowflake table grants and how they are used in Immuta's Snowflake integration.

• Snowflake data sharing with Immuta: Organizations can share the policy-protected data of their Snowflake database with other Snowflake accounts with Immuta policies enforced in real time. This guide describes the components of using Immuta with Snowflake data shares.

• Snowflake low row access policy mode: The Snowflake low row access policy mode improves query performance in Immuta's Snowflake integration. To do so, this mode decreases the number of Snowflake row access policies Immuta creates and uses table grants to manage user access. This guide describes the design and requirements of this mode.

• Snowflake lineage tag propagation: Snowflake column lineage specifies how data flows from source tables or columns to the target tables in write operations. When Snowflake lineage tag propagation is enabled in Immuta, Immuta automatically applies tags added to a Snowflake table to its descendant data source columns in Immuta so you can build policies using those tags to restrict access to sensitive data.

• Warehouse sizing recommendations: Adjust the size and scale of clusters for your warehouse to manage workloads so that you can use Snowflake compute resources the most cost effectively.

Explanatory guide

Phased Snowflake onboarding: A phased onboarding approach to configuring the Snowflake integration ensures that your users will not be immediately affected by changes as you add data sources and policies. This guide describes the settings and requirements for implementing this phased approach.

The how-to guides linked on this page illustrate how to integrate Snowflake with Immuta. See the reference guide for information about the Snowflake integration.

Requirements

• Snowflake enterprise edition

• Access to a Snowflake account that can create a Snowflake user

1. Navigate to the App Settings page.

2. Scroll to the Global Integrations Settings section.

3. Ensure the Snowflake Table Grants checkbox is checked. It is enabled by default.

4. Opt to change the Role Prefix. Snowflake table grants creates a new Snowflake role for each Immuta user. To ensure these Snowflake role names do not collide with existing Snowflake roles, each Snowflake role created for Snowflake table grants requires a common prefix. When using multiple Immuta accounts within a single Snowflake account, the Snowflake table grants role prefix should be unique for each Immuta account. The prefix must adhere to Snowflake identifier requirements and be less than 50 characters. Once the configuration is saved, the prefix cannot be modified; however, the Snowflake table grants feature can be disabled and re-enabled to change the prefix.

5. Finish configuring your integration by following one of these guidelines:

   • New Snowflake integration: Set up a new Snowflake integration by following the configuration tutorial.

   • Existing Snowflake integration (automatic setup): You will be prompted to enter connection information for a Snowflake user. Immuta will execute the migration to Snowflake table grants using a connection established with this Snowflake user. The Snowflake user you provide here must have Snowflake privileges to run these privilege grants.

   • Existing Snowflake integration (manual setup): Immuta will display a link to a migration script you must run in Snowflake and a link to a rollback script for use in the event of a failed migration. Important: Execute the migration script in Snowflake before clicking Save on the app settings page.

Prerequisites

This upgrade step is necessary if you meet both of the following criteria:

• You have the Snowflake low row access policy mode enabled in private preview.

• You have user impersonation enabled.

If you do not meet this criteria, follow the instructions on the configuration guide.

Upgrade to Snowflake low row access policy mode

To upgrade to the generally available version of the feature, disable your Snowflake integration on the app settings page and then re-enable it.

Immuta is compatible with Snowflake Secure Data Sharing. Using both Immuta and Snowflake, organizations can share the policy-protected data of their Snowflake database with other Snowflake accounts with Immuta policies enforced in real time.

Prerequisites:

• Snowflake integration enabled

• Snowflake tables registered in Immuta as data sources

Create Immuta Policies to Protect the Data

Required Permission: Immuta: GOVERNANCE

Build Immuta data policies to fit your organization's compliance requirements.

It's important to understand that subscription policies are not relevant to Snowflake data shares, because the act of sharing the data is the subscription policy. Data policies can be enforced on the consuming account from the producer account on a share following these instructions.

Register the Snowflake Data Consumer with Immuta

Required Permission: Immuta: USER_ADMIN

To register the Snowflake data consumer in Immuta,

1. Create a new Immuta user.

2. Update the Immuta user's Snowflake username to match the account ID for the data consumer. This value is the output on the data consumer side when SELECT CURRENT_ACCOUNT() is run in Snowflake.

3. Give the Immuta user the appropriate attributes and groups for your organization's policies.

4. Subscribe the Immuta user to the data sources.

Create the Snowflake Data Share

Required Permission: Snowflake ACCOUNTADMIN

To share the policy-protected data source,

1. Create a Snowflake Data Share of the Snowflake table that has been registered in Immuta.

2. Grant reference usage on the Immuta database to the share you created:

   Copy

   GRANT REFERENCE_USAGE ON DATABASE "<Immuta database of the provider account>" TO SHARE "<DATA_SHARE>";

   Replace the content in angle brackets above with the name of your Immuta database and Snowflake data share.

1. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu and scroll to the Global Integration Settings section.

2. Click the Enable Snowflake Low Row Access Policy Mode checkbox to enable the feature.

3. Confirm to allow Immuta to automatically disable impersonation for the Snowflake integration. If you do not confirm, you will not be able to enable Snowflake low row access policy mode.

4. Click Save.

Configure your Snowflake integration

If you already have a Snowflake integration configured, you don't need to reconfigure your integration. Your Snowflake policies automatically refresh when you enable Snowflake low row access policy mode.

1. Configure your Snowflake integration. Note that you will not be able to enable project workspaces or user impersonation with Snowflake low row access policy mode enabled.

2. Click Save and Confirm your changes.

To migrate from the private preview version of table grants (available before September 2022) to the GA version, complete the steps below.

1. Navigate to the App Settings page.

2. Scroll to the Global Integrations Settings section.

3. Uncheck the Snowflake Table Grants checkbox to disable the feature.

4. Click Save. Wait for about 1 minute per 1000 users. This gives time for Immuta to drop all the previously created user roles.

5. Use the Enable Snowflake table grants tutorial to re-enable the feature.

Snowflake table grants simplifies the management of privileges in Snowflake when using Immuta. Instead of having to manually grant users access to tables registered in Immuta, you allow Immuta to manage privileges on your Snowflake tables and views according to subscription policies. Then, users subscribed to a data source in Immuta can view and query the Snowflake table, while users who are not subscribed to the data source cannot view or query the Snowflake table.

Snowflake privileges

Enabling Snowflake table grants gives the following privileges to the Immuta Snowflake role:

• MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT allows the Immuta Snowflake role to grant and revoke SELECT privileges on Snowflake tables and views that have been added as data sources in Immuta.

• CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT allows for the creation of a Snowflake role for each user in Immuta, enabling fine-grained, attribute-based access controls to determine which tables are available to which individuals.

Table grants role

Since table privileges are granted to roles and not to users in Snowflake, Immuta's Snowflake table grants feature creates a new Snowflake role for each Immuta user. This design allows Immuta to manage table grants through fine-grained access controls that consider the individual attributes of users.

Each Snowflake user with an Immuta account will be granted a role that Immuta manages. The naming convention for this role is <IMMUTA>_USER_<username>, where

• <IMMUTA> is the prefix you specified when enabling the feature on the Immuta app settings page.

• <username> is the user's Immuta username.

Querying Snowflake tables managed by Immuta

Users are granted access to each Snowflake table or view automatically when they are subscribed to the corresponding data source in Immuta.

Users have two options for querying Snowflake tables that are managed by Immuta:

• that Immuta creates and manages. (For example, USE ROLE IMMUTA_USER_<username>. See the for details about the role and name conventions.) If the current active primary role is used to query tables, USAGE on a Snowflake warehouse must be granted to the Immuta-managed Snowflake role for each user.

• , which allows users to use the privileges from all roles that they have been granted, including IMMUTA_USER_<username>, in addition to the current active primary role. Users may also set a value for DEFAULT_SECONDARY_ROLES as an on a Snowflake user. To learn more about primary roles and secondary roles in Snowflake, see .

Applying GRANTs and REVOKEs at scale

Immuta uses an algorithm to determine the most optimal way to group users in a role hierarchy in order to optimize the number of GRANTs (or REVOKES) executed in Snowflake. This is done by determining the least amount of possible permutations of access across tables and users based on the policies in place; then, those become intermediate roles in the hierarchy that each user is added to, based on the intermediate roles they belong to.

As an example, take the below users and data sources they have access to. To do this naively by individually granting every user to the tables they have access to would result in 37 grants:

Conversely, using the Immuta algorithm, we can optimize the number of grants in the same scenario down to 29:

It’s important to consider a few things here:

1. If the permutations of access are small, there will be a huge optimization realized (very few intermediate roles). If every user has their own unique permutation of access, the optimization will be negligible (an intermediate role per user). It is most common that the number of permutations of access will be many multiples smaller than the actual user count, so there should be large optimizations. In other words, a much smaller number of intermediate roles and the number of total overall grants reduced, since the tables are granted to roles and roles to users.

2. This only happens once up front. After that, changes are incremental based on policy changes and user attribute changes (smaller updates), unless there’s a policy that makes a sweeping change across all users. The addition of new users who have access becomes much more straightforward also due to the fact above. User’s access will be granted via the intermediate role, and, therefore, a lot of the work is front loaded in the intermediate role creation.

Limitations

• are not supported when Snowflake table grants is enabled.

• If an Immuta tenant is connected to an external IAM and that external IAM has a username identical to another username in Immuta's built-in IAM, those users will have the same Snowflake role, leading both to see the same data.

• Sometimes the role generated can contain special characters such as @ because it's based on the user name configured from your identity manager. Because of this, it is recommended that any code references to the Immuta-generated role be enclosed with double quotes.

Contact your Immuta representative to enable this feature in your Immuta tenant.

Configure the Snowflake integration

1. Navigate to the App Setting page and click the Integration tab.

2. Click +Add Integration and select Snowflake from the dropdown menu.

3. Complete the Host, Port, and Default Warehouse fields.

4. Enable Query Audit.

5. Enable Lineage and complete the following fields:

   • Ingest Batch Sizes: This setting configures the number of rows Immuta ingests per batch when streaming Access History data from your Snowflake instance.

   • Table Filter: This filter determines which tables Immuta will ingest lineage for. Enter a regular expression that excludes / from the beginning and end to filter tables. Without this filter, Immuta will attempt to ingest lineage for every table on your Snowflake instance.

   • Tag Filter: This filter determines which tags to propagate using lineage. Enter a regular expression that excludes / from the beginning and end to filter tags. Without this filter, Immuta will ingest lineage for every tag on your Snowflake instance.

6. Select Manual or Automatic Setup and

Trigger Snowflake lineage sync job

Prerequisite

.

Trigger the lineage job

The Snowflake lineage sync endpoint triggers the lineage ingestion job that allows Immuta to propagate Snowflake tags added through lineage to Immuta data sources.

1. Copy the example and replace the Immuta URL and API key with your own.

2. Change the payload attribute values to your own, where

   • tableFilter (string): This regular expression determines which tables Immuta will ingest lineage for. Enter a regular expression that excludes / from the beginning and end to filter tables. Without this filter, Immuta will attempt to ingest lineage for every table on your Snowflake instance.

   • batchSize (integer): This parameter configures the number of rows Immuta ingests per batch when streaming Access History data from your Snowflake instance. Minimum 1.

   • lastTimestamp (string): Setting this parameter will only return lineage events later than the value provided. Use a format like 2022-06-29T09:47:06.012-07:00.

Next steps

Once the sync job is complete, you can complete the following steps:

Immuta is compatible with . Using both Immuta and Snowflake, organizations can share the policy-protected data of their Snowflake database with other Snowflake accounts with Immuta policies enforced in real time. This integration gives data consumers a live connection to the data and relieves data providers of the legal and technical burden of creating static data copies that leave their Snowflake environment.

Requirements:

• Snowflake Enterprise Edition or higher

• Immuta's

Configuration

This method requires that the data consumer account is registered as an Immuta user with the Snowflake user name equal to the consuming account.

At that point, the user that represents the account being shared with can have the appropriate attributes and groups assigned to them, relevant to the data policies that need to be enforced. Once that user has access to the share in the consuming account (not managed by Immuta), they can query the share with the data policies from the producer account enforced because Immuta is treating that account as if they are a single user in Immuta.

For a tutorial on this workflow, see the .

Benefits

Using Immuta with Snowflake Data Sharing allows the sharer to

• Only need limited knowledge of the context or goals of the existing policies in place: Because the sharer is not editing or creating policies to share their data, they only need a limited knowledge of how the policies work. Their main responsibility is making sure they properly represent the attributes of the data consumer (the account being shared to).

• Leave policies untouched.

While you're onboarding Snowflake data sources and designing policies, you don't want to disrupt your Snowflake users' existing workflows. Instead, you want to gradually onboard Immuta through a series of successive changes that will not impact your existing Snowflake users.

A phased onboarding approach to configuring the Snowflake integration ensures that your users will not be immediately affected by changes as you add data sources and configure policies.

Several features allow you to gradually onboard data sources and policies in Immuta:

• No subscription policies are applied at the time of data registration: No policy is applied at registration time unless an existing global policy applies to it; the table is registered in Immuta and waits for a policy to be applied, if ever.

  There are several benefits to this design:

  • All existing roles maintain access to the data and registration of the table or view with Immuta has zero impact on your data platform.

  • It gives you time to configure tags on the Immuta registered tables and views, either manually or through automatic means, such as identification, or an external catalog integration to include Snowflake tags.

  • It gives you time to assess and validate the sensitive data tags that were applied.

  • You can build only row and column controls with Immuta and let your existing roles manage table access instead of using Immuta subscription policies for table access.

• Snowflake table grants coupled with Snowflake low row access policy mode: With these features enabled, Immuta manages access to tables (subscription policies) through GRANTs. This works by assigning each user their own unique role created by Immuta and all table access is managed using that single role.

  Without these two features enabled, Immuta uses a Snowflake row access policy (RAP) to manage table access. A RAP only allows users to access rows in the table if they were explicitly granted access through an Immuta subscription policy; otherwise, the user sees no rows. This behavior means all existing Snowflake roles lose access to the table contents until explicitly granted access through Immuta subscription policies. Essentially, roles outside of Immuta don't control access anymore.

  By using table grants and the low row access policy mode, users and roles outside Immuta continue to work.

  There are two benefits to this approach:

  • All pre-existing Snowflake roles retain access to the data until you explicitly revoke access (outside Immuta).

  • It provides a way to test that Immuta GRANTs are working without impacting production workloads.

Requirements

The following configuration is required for phased Snowflake onboarding:

• Impersonation is disabled

• Project workspaces are disabled

If either of these capabilities is necessary for your use case, you cannot do phased Snowflake onboarding as described below.

Next

See the Getting started page for step-by-step guidance to implement phased Snowflake onboarding.

Snowflake column lineage specifies how data flows from source tables or columns to the target tables in write operations. When Snowflake lineage tag propagation is enabled in Immuta, Immuta automatically applies tags added to a Snowflake table to its descendant data source columns in Immuta so you can build policies using those tags to restrict access to sensitive data.

Snowflake Access History tracks user read and write operations. Snowflake column lineage extends this Access History to specify how data flows from source columns to the target columns in write operations, allowing data stewards to understand how sensitive data moves from ancestor tables to target tables so that they can

• trace data back to its source to validate the integrity of dashboards and reports,

• identify who performed write operations to meet compliance requirements,

• evaluate data quality and pinpoint points of failure, and

• tag sensitive data on source tables without having tag columns on their descendant tables.

However, tagging sensitive data doesn’t innately protect that data in Snowflake; users need Immuta to disseminate these lineage tags automatically to descendant tables registered in Immuta so data stewards can build policies using the semantic and business context captured by those tags to restrict access to sensitive data. When Snowflake lineage tag propagation is enabled, Immuta propagates tags applied to a data source to its descendant data source columns in Immuta, which keeps your data inventory in Immuta up-to-date and allows you to protect your data with policies without having to manually tag every new Snowflake data source you register in Immuta.

Data flow

1. An application administrator enables the feature on the Immuta app settings page.

2. Snowflake lineage metadata (column names and tags) for the Snowflake tables is stored in the metadata database.

3. A data owner creates a new data source (or adds a new column to a Snowflake table) that initiates a job that applies all tags for each column from its ancestor columns.

4. A data owner or governor adds a tag to a column in Immuta that has descendants, which initiates a job that propagates the tag to all descendants.

5. An audit record is created that includes which tags were applied and from which columns those tags originated.

Snowflake access history view and Immuta lineage job

The Snowflake Account Usage ACCESS_HISTORY view contains column lineage information.

To appropriately propagate tags to descendant data sources, Immuta fetches Access History metadata to determine what column tags have been updated, stores this metadata in the Immuta metadata database, and then applies those tags to relevant descendant columns of tables registered in Immuta.

Consider the following example using the Customer, Customer 2, and Customer 3 tables that were all registered in Immuta as data sources.

• Customer: source table

• Customer 2: descendant of Customer

• Customer 3: descendant of Customer 2

If the Discovered.Electronic Mail Address tag is added to the Customer data source in Immuta, that tag will propagate through lineage to the Customer 2 and Customer 3 data sources.

Data source registration

After an application administrator has enabled Snowflake lineage tag propagation, data owners can register data in Immuta and have tags in Snowflake propagated from ancestor tables to descendant data sources. Whenever new tags are added to those tables in Immuta, those upstream tags will propagate to descendant data sources.

By default, all tags are propagated, but these tags can be filtered on the app settings page or using the Immuta API.

Managing tags

Lineage tag propagation works with any tag added to the data dictionary. Tags can be manually added, synced from an external catalog, or discovered by identification. Consider the following example using the Customer, Customer 2, and Customer 3 tables that were all registered in Immuta as data sources.

• Customer: source table

• Customer 2: descendant of Customer

• Customer 3: descendant of Customer 2

Immuta added the Discovered.Electronic Mail Address tag to the Customer data source, and that tag propagated through lineage to the Customer 2 and Customer 3 data sources.

Removing the tag from the Customer 2 table soft deletes it from the Customer 2 data source. When a tag is deleted, downstream lineage tags are removed, unless another parent data source still has that tag. The tag remains visible, but it will not be re-added if a future propagation event specifies the same tag again. Immuta prevents you from removing Snowflake object tags from data sources. You can only remove Immuta-managed tags. To remove Snowflake object tags from tables, you must remove them in Snowflake.

However the Discovered.Electronic Mail Address tag still applies to the Customer 3 data source because Customer still has the tag applied. The only way a tag will be removed from descendant data sources is if no other ancestor of the descendant still prescribes the tag.

If the Snowflake lineage tag propagation feature is disabled, tags will remain on Immuta data sources.

Identification

will still run on data sources and can be manually triggered. Tags applied through identification will propagate as tags added through lineage to descendant Immuta data sources.

Snowflake lineage audit

Immuta audit records include Snowflake lineage tag events when a tag is added or removed.

The example audit record below illustrates the SNOWFLAKE_TAGS.pii tag successfully propagating from the Customer table to Customer 2:

Limitations

• Without tableFilter set, Immuta will ingest lineage for every table on the Snowflake instance.

• Tag propagation based on lineage is not retroactive. For example, if you add a table, add tags to that table, and then run the lineage ingestion job, tags will not get propagated. However, if you add a table, run the lineage ingestion job, and then add tags to the table, the tags will get propagated.

• The lineage job needs to pull in lineage data before any tag is applied in Immuta. When Immuta gets new lineage information from Snowflake, Immuta does not update existing tags in Immuta.

• There can be up to a 3-hour delay in Snowflake for a lineage event to make it into the ACCESS_HISTORY view.

• Immuta does not ingest lineage information for views.

• Snowflake only captures lineage events for CTAS, CLONE, MERGE, and INSERT write operations. Snowflake does not capture lineage events for DROP, RENAME, ADD, or SWAP. Instead of using these latter operations, you need to recreate a table with the same name if you need to make changes.

• Immuta cannot enforce coherence of your Snowflake lineage. If a column, table, or schema in the middle of the lineage graph gets dropped, Immuta will not do anything unless a table with that same name gets recreated. This means a table that gets dropped but not recreated could live in Immuta’s system indefinitely.

The warehouse you select when configuring the Snowflake integration uses compute resources to set up the integration, register data sources, orchestrate policies, and run jobs like identification. Snowflake credit charges are based on the size of and amount of time the warehouse is active, not the number of queries run.

This document prescribes how and when to adjust the size and scale of clusters for your warehouse to manage workloads so that you can use Snowflake compute resources the most cost effectively.

In general, increase the size of and number of clusters for the warehouse to handle heavy workloads and multiple queries. Workloads are typically lighter after data sources are onboarded and policies are established in Immuta, so compute resources can be reduced after those workloads complete.

Integration and data source registration warehouse use

The Snowflake integration uses warehouse compute resources to sync policies created in Immuta to the Snowflake objects registered as data sources and, if configured, to run and . Follow the guidelines below to adjust the warehouse size and scale according to your needs.

• Increase the of and of clusters for the warehouse during large policy syncs, updates, and changes.

• Enable to optimize resource use in Snowflake. In the Snowflake UI, the lowest auto suspend time setting is 5 minutes. However, through SQL query, you can set auto_suspend to 61 seconds (since the minimum uptime for a warehouse is 60 seconds). For example,

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• Identification uses compute resources for each table it runs on. Consider when registering data sources if you have an or a tagging strategy in place.

• Register data before creating global policies. Immuta does not apply a subscription policy on registered data unless an existing global policy applies to it, which allows Immuta to only pull metadata instead of also applying policies when data sources are created. Registering data before policies are created reduces the workload and the Snowflake compute resources needed.

• Begin onboarding with a small dataset of tables, and then review and monitor query performance in the . Adjust the virtual warehouse accordingly to handle heavier loads.

• uses the compute warehouse that was employed during the initial ingestion to periodically monitor the schema for changes. If you expect a low number of new tables or minimal changes to the table structure, consider scaling down the warehouse size.

• Resize the warehouse after after data sources are registered and policies are established. For example,

For more details and guidance about warehouse sizing, see the .

Identifying bulk jobs and heavy workloads

Even after your integration is configured, data sources are registered, and policies are established, changes to those data sources or policies may initiate heavy workloads. Follow the guidelines below to adjust your warehouse size and scale according to your needs.

• Review your to identify query performance and bottlenecks.

• Check how many credits queries have consumed:

• After reviewing query performance and cost, implement to adjust your warehouse.

The Snowflake low row access policy mode improves query performance in Immuta's Snowflake integration by decreasing the number of Immuta creates and by using table grants to manage user access.

Immuta manages access to Snowflake tables by administering and on those tables, allowing users to query them directly in Snowflake while policies are enforced.

Without Snowflake low row access policy mode enabled, row access policies are created and administered by Immuta in the following scenarios:

• are disabled and a subscription policy that does not automatically subscribe everyone to the data source is applied. Immuta administers Snowflake row access policies to filter out all the rows to restrict access to the entire table when the user doesn't have privileges to query it. However, if table grants are disabled and a subscription policy is applied that grants everyone access to the data source automatically, Immuta does not create a row access policy in Snowflake. See the for details about these policy types.

• is applied to a data source. A row access policy filters out all the rows of the table if users aren't acting under the purpose specified in the policy when they query the table.

• is applied to a data source. A row access policy filters out rows querying users don't have access to.

• is enabled. A row access policy is created for every Snowflake table registered in Immuta.

Reducing row access policies

Snowflake low row access policy mode is enabled by default to reduce the number of row access policies Immuta creates and improve query performance. Snowflake low row access policy mode requires

• .

• user impersonation to be disabled. User impersonation diminishes the performance of interactive queries because of the number of row access policies Immuta creates when it's enabled.

Requirements

Project-scoped purpose exceptions for Snowflake with low row access policy mode enabled

Project-scoped purpose exceptions for Snowflake integrations allow you to apply to Snowflake data sources in a project. As a result, users can only access that data when they are working within that specific project.

Masked joins for Snowflake with low row access policy mode enabled

This feature allows masked columns to be joined across data sources that belong to the same project. When data sources do not belong to a project, Immuta uses a unique salt per data source for hashing to prevent masked values from being joined. (See the guide for an explanation of that behavior.) However, once you add Snowflake data sources to a project and enable masked joins, Immuta uses a consistent salt across all the data sources in that project to allow the join.

For more information about masked joins and enabling them for your project, see the of documentation.

Limitations and considerations

• Project workspaces are not compatible with this feature.

• Impersonation is not supported when the Snowflake low row access policy mode is enabled.

Requirements

• APPLICATION_ADMIN Immuta permission

• The Snowflake user registering the connection and running the script must have the following privileges:

  • CREATE DATABASE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE USER ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

Prerequisites

No Snowflake integration configured in Immuta. If your Snowflake integration is already configured on the app settings page, follow the Use the connection upgrade manager guide.

Set up the Immuta system account

Complete the following actions in Snowflake:

1. Create a new user in Snowflake to be the Immuta system account. Immuta will use this system account continuously to orchestrate Snowflake policies and maintain state between Immuta and Snowflake.

2. Create a Snowflake role with a minimum of the following privileges:

   • USAGE on all databases and schemas with registered data sources.

   • REFERENCES on all tables and views registered in Immuta.

   • SELECT on all tables and views registered in Immuta.

3. Grant the new Snowflake role to the system account you just created.

Register a connection

To register a Snowflake connection, follow the instructions below.

1. Click Data and select the Connections tab in the navigation menu.

2. Click the + Add Connection button.

3. Select the Snowflake data platform tile.

4. Enter the connection information:

   • Host: The URL of your Snowflake account.

   • Port: Your Snowflake port.

   • Warehouse: The warehouse the Immuta system account user will use to run queries and perform Snowflake operations.

   • Immuta Database: The new, empty database for Immuta to manage. This is where system views, user entitlements, row access policies, column-level policies, procedures, and functions managed by Immuta will be created and stored.

   • Display Name: The display name represents the unique name of your connection and will be used as prefix in the name for all data objects associated with this connection. It will also appear as the display name in the UI and will be used in all API calls made to update or delete the connection.

5. Click Next.

6. Select an authentication method from the dropdown menu and enter the authentication information for the Immuta system account you created. Enter the Role with the listed privileges, then continue to enter the authentication information:

   1. Username and password (Not recommended): Choose one of the following options.

      1. Select Immuta Generated to have Immuta populate the system account name and password.

      2. Select User Provided to enter your own name and password for the Immuta system account.

   2. Snowflake External OAuth:

      1. Fill out the Token Endpoint, which is where the generated token is sent. It is also known as aud (audience) and iss (issuer).

      2. Fill out the Client ID, which is the subject of the generated token. It is also known as sub (subject).

      3. Opt to fill out the Resource field with a URI of the resource where the requested token will be used.

      4. Enter the x509 Certificate Thumbprint. This identifies the corresponding key to the token and is often abbreviated as x5t or is called kid (key identifier).

      5. Upload the PEM Certificate, which is the client certificate that is used to sign the authorization request.

   3. Key Pair Authentication:

      1. Complete the Username field. This user must be assigned the public key in Snowflake.

      2. If using an encrypted private key, enter the Private Key Password.

      3. Click Select a File, and upload the Snowflake private key pair file.

7. Copy the provided script and run it in Snowflake as a user with the privileges listed in the requirements section. Running this script grants the following privileges to the Immuta system account:

   1. CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

   2. APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

   3. APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

   4. MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

   Alternatively, you can grant the Immuta system account OWNERSHIP on the objects that Immuta will secure, instead of granting MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT. The current role that has OWNERSHIP on the securables will need to be granted to the Immuta system role. However, if granting OWNERSHIP instead of MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT, Immuta will not be able to manage the role that is granted to the account, so it is recommended to run the script as-is, without changes.

8. Click Test Connection.

9. If the connection is successful, click Next. If there are any errors, check the connection details and credentials to ensure they are correct and try again.

10. Ensure all the details are correct in the summary and click Complete Setup.

To or a Snowflake integration, you have two options:

• Automatic: Grant Immuta one-time use of credentials with the following privileges to automatically edit or remove the integration:

  • CREATE DATABASE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE USER ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• Manual: Run the Immuta script in your Snowflake environment as a user with the following privileges to edit or remove the integration:

  • CREATE DATABASE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE USER ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

Edit a Snowflake integration

Select one of the following options for editing your integration:

• : Grant Immuta one-time use of credentials to automatically edit the integration.

• : Run the Immuta script in your Snowflake environment yourself to edit the integration.

Automatic edit

1. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu.

2. Click the Integrations tab and click the down arrow next to the Snowflake integration.

3. Edit the field you want to change or check a checkbox of a feature you would like to enable. Note any field shadowed is not editable, and the integration must be disabled and re-installed to change it.

4. From the Select Authentication Method Dropdown, select either Username and Password or Key Pair Authentication:

   • Username and Password option: Complete the Username, Password, and Role fields.

   • Key Pair Authentication option:

     1. Complete the Username field.

     2. Click Key Pair (Required), and upload a Snowflake key pair file.

     3. Complete the Role field.

5. Click Save.

Manual edit

1. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu.

2. Click the Integrations tab and click the down arrow next to the Snowflake integration.

3. Edit the field you want to change or check a checkbox of a feature you would like to enable. Note any field shadowed is not editable, and the integration must be disabled and re-installed to change it.

4. Click edit script to download the script, and then run it in Snowflake.

5. Click Save.

Remove a Snowflake integration

Select one of the following options for deleting your integration:

• : Grant Immuta one-time use of credentials to automatically remove the integration and Immuta-managed resources from your Snowflake environment.

• : Run the Immuta script in your Snowflake environment yourself to remove Immuta-managed resources and policies from Snowflake.

Automatic removal

1. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu.

2. Click the Integrations tab and click the down arrow next to the Snowflake integration.

3. Click the checkbox to disable the integration.

4. Enter the Username, Password, and Role that was entered when the integration was configured.

5. Click Save.

Manual removal

1. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu.

2. Click the Integrations tab and click the down arrow next to the Snowflake integration.

3. Click the checkbox to disable the integration.

4. Click cleanup script to download the script.

5. Click Save.

6. Run the cleanup script in Snowflake.

Permissions

The permissions outlined in this section are the Snowflake privileges required for a basic configuration. See the Snowflake reference guide for a list of privileges necessary for additional features and settings.

• APPLICATION_ADMIN Immuta permission

• The Snowflake user running the installation script must have the following privileges:

  • CREATE DATABASE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • CREATE USER ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

  • APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• The Snowflake user registering data sources must have the following privileges on all securables:

  • USAGE on all databases and schemas with registered data sources

  • REFERENCES on all tables and views registered in Immuta

  • SELECT on all tables and views registered in Immuta

Configure the integration

1. Opt to configure private connectivity for Snowflake.

2. Click the App Settings icon in the navigation menu.

3. Click the Integrations tab.

4. Click the +Add Integration button and select Snowflake from the dropdown menu.

5. Complete the Host, Port, and Default Warehouse fields.

6. Opt to check the Enable Project Workspace box. This will allow for managed write access within Snowflake. Note: Project workspaces still use Snowflake views, so the default role of the account used to create the data sources in the project must be added to the Excepted Roles List. This option is unavailable when table grants is enabled.

7. Opt to check the Enable Impersonation box and customize the Impersonation Role to allow users to natively impersonate another user. You cannot edit this choice after you configure the integration.

8. Snowflake query audit is enabled by default.

   1. Configure the audit frequency by scrolling to Integrations Settings and find the Snowflake Audit Sync Schedule section.

   2. Enter how often, in hours, you want Immuta to ingest audit events from Snowflake as an integer between 1 and 24.

   3. Continue with your integration configuration.

Select your configuration method

You have two options for configuring your Snowflake environment:

• Automatic setup: Grant Immuta one-time use of credentials to automatically configure your Snowflake environment and the integration.

• Manual setup: Run the Immuta script in your Snowflake environment yourself to configure your Snowflake environment and the integration.

Automatic setup

Required permissions: When performing an automatic setup, the credentials provided must have the permissions listed above.

The setup will use the provided credentials to create a user called IMMUTA_SYSTEM_ACCOUNT and grant the following privileges to that user:

• CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

Alternatively, you can use the manual setup method and edit the provided script to grant the Immuta system account OWNERSHIP on the objects that Immuta will secure, instead of granting MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT. The current role that has OWNERSHIP on the securables will need to be granted to the Immuta system role. However, if granting OWNERSHIP instead of MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT, Immuta will not be able to manage the role that is granted to the account, so it is recommended to run the script as-is, without changes.

From the Select Authentication Method Dropdown, select one of the following authentication methods:

• Username and Password (Not recommended): Complete the Username, Password, and Role fields.

• Key Pair Authentication:

  1. Complete the Username field. This user must be assigned the public key in Snowflake.

  2. When using an encrypted private key, enter the private key file password in the Additional Connection String Options. Use the following format: PRIV_KEY_FILE_PWD=<your_pw>

  3. Click Key Pair (Required), and upload a Snowflake private key pair file.

  4. Complete the Role field.

Manual setup

Required permissions: When performing a manual setup, the Snowflake user running the script must have the permissions listed above.

It will create a user called IMMUTA_SYSTEM_ACCOUNT, and grant the following privileges to that user:

• CREATE ROLE ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• APPLY MASKING POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• APPLY ROW ACCESS POLICY ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

• MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT WITH GRANT OPTION

Alternatively, you can grant the Immuta system account OWNERSHIP on the objects that Immuta will secure, instead of granting MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT. The current role that has OWNERSHIP on the securables will need to be granted to the Immuta system role. However, if granting OWNERSHIP instead of MANAGE GRANTS ON ACCOUNT, Immuta will not be able to manage the role that is granted to the account, so it is recommended to run the script as-is, without changes.

Run the script

1. Select Manual.

2. Use the Dropdown Menu to select your Authentication Method:

   • Username and password (Not recommended): Enter the Username and Password and set them in the bootstrap script for the Immuta system account credentials.

   • Key Pair Authentication: Upload the Key Pair file and when using an encrypted private key, enter the private key file password in the Additional Connection String Options. Use the following format: PRIV_KEY_FILE_PWD=<your_pw>

   • Snowflake External OAuth:

     1. Create a security integration for your Snowflake External OAuth. Note that if you have an existing security integration, then the Immuta system role must be added to the existing EXTERNAL_OAUTH_ALLOWED_ROLES_LIST. The Immuta system role will be the Immuta database provided above with _SYSTEM. If you used the default database name it will be IMMUTA_SYSTEM.

     2. Fill out the Token Endpoint. This is where the generated token is sent.

     3. Fill out the Client ID. This is the subject of the generated token.

     4. Select the method Immuta will use to obtain an access token:

        • Certificate

          1. Keep the Use Certificate checkbox enabled.

          2. Opt to fill out the Resource field with a URI of the resource where the requested token will be used.

          3. Enter the x509 Certificate Thumbprint. This identifies the corresponding key to the token and is often abbreviated as `x5t` or is called `sub` (Subject).

          4. Upload the PEM Certificate, which is the client certificate that is used to sign the authorization request.

        • Client secret

          1. Uncheck the Use Certificate checkbox.

          2. Enter the Scope (string). The scope limits the operations and roles allowed in Snowflake by the access token. See the OAuth 2.0 scopes documentation for details about scopes.

          3. Enter the Client Secret (string). Immuta uses this secret to authenticate with the authorization server when it requests a token.

3. In the Setup section, click bootstrap script to download the script. Then, fill out the appropriate fields and run the bootstrap script in Snowflake.

Select available warehouses (optional)

If you enabled a Snowflake workspace, select Warehouses from the dropdown menu that will be available to project owners when creating Snowflake workspaces. Select from a list of all the warehouses available to the privileged account entered above. Note that any warehouse accessible by the PUBLIC role does not need to be explicitly added.

Select excepted roles and users

Enter the Excepted Roles/User List. Each role or username (both case-sensitive) in this list should be separated by a comma. Wildcards are unsupported.

Save the configuration

Click Save.

Opt to enable Snowflake tag ingestion

To allow Immuta to automatically import table and column tags from Snowflake, enable Snowflake tag ingestion in the external catalog section of the Immuta app settings page.

Requirements:

• A configured Snowflake integration or connection

• The Snowflake user configuring the Snowflake tag ingestion must have the following privileges and should be able to access all securables registered as data sources:

  • IMPORTED PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE snowflake

  • APPLY TAG ON ACCOUNT

1. Navigate to the App Settings page.

2. Scroll to 2 External Catalogs, and click Add Catalog.

3. Enter a Display Name and select Snowflake from the dropdown menu.

4. Enter the Account.

5. Enter the Authentication information based on your authentication method:

   1. Username and password: Fill out Username and Password.

   2. Key pair:

      1. Fill out Username.

      2. Click Upload Certificates to enter in the Certificate Authority, Certificate File, and Key File.

      3. Close the modal and opt to enter the Encrypted Key File Passphrase.

6. Enter the additional Snowflake details: Port, Default Warehouse, and Role.

7. Opt to enter the Proxy Host and Proxy Port.

8. Click the Test Connection button.

9. Click the Test Data Source Link.

10. Once both tests are successful, click Save.

Register data

Register Snowflake data in Immuta.

In this integration, Immuta manages access to Snowflake tables by administering Snowflake row access policies and column masking policies on those tables, allowing users to query tables directly in Snowflake while dynamic policies are enforced.

Like with all Immuta integrations, Immuta can inject its ABAC model into policy building and administration to remove policy management burden and significantly reduce role explosion.

How the integration works

When an administrator configures the Snowflake integration with Immuta, Immuta creates an IMMUTA database and schemas (immuta_procedures, immuta_policies, and immuta_functions) within Snowflake to contain policy definitions and user entitlements. Immuta then creates a system role and gives that system account the privileges required to orchestrate policies in Snowflake and maintain state between Snowflake and Immuta. See the Snowflake privileges section for a list of privileges, the user they must be granted to, and an explanation of why they must be granted.

Data flow

1. An Immuta application administrator configures the Snowflake integration and registers Snowflake warehouse and databases with Immuta.

2. Immuta creates a database inside the configured Snowflake warehouse that contains Immuta policy definitions and user entitlements.

3. A data owner registers Snowflake tables in Immuta as data sources.

4. If Snowflake tag ingestion was enabled during the configuration, Immuta uses the host provided in the configuration and ingests internal tags on Snowflake tables registered as Immuta data sources.

5. A data owner, data governor, or administrator creates or changes a policy or a user's attributes change in Immuta.

6. The Immuta web service calls a stored procedure that modifies the user entitlements or policies.

7. Immuta manages and applies Snowflake governance column and row access policies to Snowflake tables that are registered as Immuta data sources.

8. If Snowflake table grants is not enabled, Snowflake object owner or user with the global MANAGE GRANTS privilege grants SELECT privilege on relevant Snowflake tables to users. Note: Although they are GRANTed access, if they are not subscribed to the table via Immuta-authored policies, they will not see data.

9. A Snowflake user who is subscribed to the data source in Immuta queries the corresponding table directly in Snowflake and sees policy-enforced data.

Policy enforcement

When Immuta users create policies, they are then pushed into the Immuta database within Snowflake; there, the Immuta system account orchestrates Snowflake row access policies and column masking policies directly onto Snowflake tables. Changes in Immuta policies, user attributes, or data sources trigger webhooks that keep the Snowflake policies up-to-date.

For a user to query Immuta-protected data, they must meet two qualifications:

1. They must be subscribed to the Immuta data source.

2. They must be granted SELECT access on the table by the Snowflake object owner or automatically via the Snowflake table grants feature.

After a user has met these qualifications they can query Snowflake tables directly.

See the integration support matrix on the Data policy types reference guide for a list of supported data policy types in Snowflake.

Comply with column length and precision requirements in a Snowflake masking policy

When a user applies a masking policy to a Snowflake data source, Immuta truncates masked values to align with Snowflake column length (VARCHAR(X) types) and precision (NUMBER (X,Y) types) requirements.

Consider these columns in a data source that have the following masking policies applied:

• Column A (VARCHAR(6)): Mask using hashing for everyone

• Column B (VARCHAR(5)): Mask using a constant REDACTED for everyone

• Column C (VARCHAR(6)): Mask by making null for everyone

• Column D (NUMBER(3, 0)): Mask by rounding to the nearest 10 for everyone

Querying this data source in Snowflake would return the following values:

For more details about Snowflake column length and precision requirements, see the Snowflake behavior change release documentation.

Query performance

When a policy is applied to a column, Immuta uses Snowflake memoizable functions to cache the result of the called function. Then, when a user queries a column that has that policy applied to it, Immuta uses that cached result to dramatically improve query performance.

Snowflake privileges

The privilege grants the Snowflake integration requires align to the least privilege security principle. The table below describes each privilege required in Snowflake for the setup user, the IMMUTA_SYSTEM_ACCOUNT user, or the metadata registration user. The references to IMMUTA_DB , IMMUTA_WH, and IMMUTA_IMPERSONATOR_ROLE in the table can be replaced with what you chose for the name of your Immuta database, warehouse, and impersonation role when setting up the integration, respectively.

Integration health status

The status of the integration is visible on the integrations tab of the Immuta application settings page. If errors occur in the integration, a banner will appear in the Immuta UI with guidance for remediating the error.

The definitions for each status and the state of configured data platform integrations is available in the response schema of the integrations API. However, the UI consolidates these error statuses and provides detail in the error messages.

Registering data sources

Register Snowflake data sources using a dedicated Snowflake role. Avoid using individual user accounts for data source onboarding. Instead, create a service account (Snowflake user account TYPE=SERVICE) with SELECT access for onboarding data sources. No policies will apply to that account, ensuring that your integration works with the following use cases:

• Snowflake project workspaces: Snowflake workspaces generate static views with the credentials used to register the table as an Immuta data source. Those tables must be registered in Immuta by an excepted role so that policies applied to the backing tables are not applied to the project workspace views.

• Using views and tables within Immuta: Because this integration uses Snowflake governance policies, users can register tables and views as Immuta data sources. However, if you want to register views and apply different policies to them than their backing tables, the owner of the view must be an excepted role; otherwise, the backing table’s policies will be applied to that view.

Snowflake bulk data source creation

Bulk data source creation is the more efficient process when loading more than 5000 data sources from Snowflake and allows for data sources to be registered in Immuta before running identification or applying policies.

To use this feature, see the Bulk create Snowflake data sources guide.

Resource allocations

Based on performance tests that create 100,000 data sources, Immuta recommends a SaaS XL environment.

Limitations

• Performance gains are limited when enabling identification at the time of data source creation.

• External catalog integrations are not recognized during bulk data source creation. Users must manually trigger a catalog sync for tags to appear on the data source through the data source's health check.

Excepted roles/users

Excepted roles and users are assigned when the integration is installed, and no policies will apply to these users' queries, despite any Immuta policies enforced on the tables they are querying. Credentials used to register a data source in Immuta will be automatically added to this excepted list for that Snowflake table. Consequently, roles and users added to this list and used to register data sources in Immuta should be limited to service accounts.

Immuta excludes the listed roles and users from policies by wrapping all policies in a CASE statement that will check if a user is acting under one of the listed usernames or roles. If a user is, then the policy will not be acted on the queried table. If the user is not, then the policy will be executed like normal. Immuta does not distinguish between role and username, so if you have a role and user with the exact same name, both the user and any user acting under that role will have full access to the data sources and no policies will be enforced for them.

Authentication methods

The Snowflake integration supports the following authentication methods to configure the integration and create data sources:

• Username and password: Users can authenticate with their Snowflake username and password.

• Key pair: Users can authenticate with a Snowflake key pair authentication.

• Snowflake External OAuth: Users can authenticate with Snowflake External OAuth.

Snowflake External OAuth

Immuta's OAuth authentication method uses the Client Credentials Flow to integrate with Snowflake External OAuth. When a user configures the Snowflake integration or connects a Snowflake data source, Immuta uses the token credentials (obtained using a certificate or passing a client secret) to craft an authenticated access token to connect with Snowflake. This allows organizations that already use Snowflake External OAuth to use that secure authentication with Immuta.

Workflow

1. An Immuta application administrator configures the Snowflake integration or creates a data source.

2. Immuta creates a custom token and sends it to the authorization server.

3. The authorization server confirms the information sent from Immuta and issues an access token to Immuta.

4. Immuta sends the access token it received from the authorization server to Snowflake.

5. Snowflake authenticates the token and grants access to the requested resources from Immuta.

6. The integration is connected and users can query data.

Supported Snowflake features

The Immuta Snowflake integration supports the following Snowflake features:

• Private connectivity for Snowflake: While Immuta does not persist any of your data, data is temporarily held in memory in some instances, like when a user generates a data source fingerprint. This data is encrypted using TLS from the data source to Immuta as it traverses the public internet. Alternatively, Immuta can be connected to a user's Snowflake Account over either AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link so that any data moving between the user's data source and the Immuta tenant is over a private network.

• Snowflake external tables: However, you cannot add a masking policy to an external table column while creating the external table in Snowflake because masking policies cannot be attached to virtual columns.

Supported object types

When applying read and write access subscription policies to data sources, the privileges granted by Immuta vary depending on the object type. See an outline of privileges granted by Immuta on Snowflake object types on the Subscription policy access types page.

Supported Immuta features

The Snowflake integration supports the Immuta features outlined below. Click the links provided for more details.

• Immuta project workspaces: Users can have additional write access in their integration using project workspaces.

• Tag ingestion: Immuta automatically ingests Snowflake object tags from your Snowflake instance and adds them to the appropriate data sources.

• User impersonation: Impersonation allows users to query data as another Immuta user. To enable user impersonation, see the Integration user impersonation page.

• Query audit: Immuta audits queries run in Snowflake against Snowflake data registered as Immuta data sources.

• Multiple Snowflake instances

• Snowflake low row access policy mode: The Snowflake low row access policy mode improves query performance in Immuta's Snowflake integration by decreasing the number of Snowflake row access policies Immuta creates.

• Snowflake table grants: This feature allows Immuta to manage privileges on your Snowflake tables and views according to the subscription policies on the corresponding Immuta data sources.

Immuta project workspaces

Users can have additional write access in their integration using project workspaces. For more details, see the Snowflake project workspaces page.

Caveat

To use project workspaces with the Snowflake integration, the default role of the account used to create data sources in the project must be added to the "Excepted Roles/Users List." If the role is not added, you will not be able to query the equalized view using the project role in Snowflake.

Tag ingestion

You can enable Snowflake tag ingestion so that Immuta will ingest Snowflake object tags from your Snowflake instance into Immuta and add them to the appropriate data sources.

The Snowflake tags' key and value pairs will be reflected in Immuta as two levels: the key will be the top level and the value the second. As Snowflake tags are hierarchical, Snowflake tags applied to a database will also be applied to all of the schemas in that database, all of the tables within those schemas, and all of the columns within those tables. For example: If a database is tagged PII, all of the tables and columns in that database will also be tagged PII.

Snowflake tag ingestion supports two authentication methods:

• Username and password

• Key pair

To enable Snowflake tag ingestion, see the Configure a Snowflake integration page.

Caveats

Snowflake has some natural data latency. If you manually refresh the governance page to see all tags created globally, users can experience a delay of up to two hours. However, if you run schema detection or a health check to find where those tags are applied, the delay will not occur because Immuta will only refresh tags for those specific tables.

Query audit

The Snowflake integration audits Immuta user queries run in the integration's warehouses by running a query in Snowflake to retrieve user query histories. Those histories are then populated into audit logs. See the Snowflake audit page for details about the contents of the logs.

The audit ingest is set when configuring the integration. The default ingest frequency is every hour, but this can be configured to a different frequency on the Immuta app settings page. Additionally, audit ingestion can be manually requested at any time from the Immuta audit page. When manually requested, it will only search for new queries that were created since the last query that had been audited. The job is run in the background, so the new queries will not be immediately available.

Multiple Snowflake instances

A user can configure multiple integrations of Snowflake to a single Immuta tenant and use them dynamically.

Caveats

• There can only be one integration connection with Immuta per host.

• The host of the data source must match the host of the integration for the view to be created.

• Projects can only be configured to use one Snowflake host.

Limitations

• If there are errors in generating or applying policies natively in Snowflake, the data source will be locked and only users on the excepted roles/users list and the credentials used to create the data source will be able to access the data.

• Once a Snowflake integration is disabled in Immuta, the user must remove the access that was granted in Snowflake. If that access is not revoked, users will be able to access the raw table in Snowflake.

• Migration must be done using the credentials and credential method (automatic or bootstrap) used to configure the integration.

• When configuring one Snowflake instance with multiple Immuta tenants, the user or system account that enables the integration on the app settings page must be unique for each Immuta tenant.

• You cannot add a masking policy to an external table column while creating the external table because a masking policy cannot be attached to a virtual column.

• If you create an Immuta data source from a Snowflake view created using a select * from query, Immuta column detection will not work as expected because Snowflake views are not automatically updated based on backing table changes. To remedy this, you can create views that have the specific columns you want or you can CREATE AND REPLACE the view in Snowflake whenever the backing table is updated and manually run the column detection job on the data source page.

• If a user is created in Snowflake after that user is already registered in Immuta, Immuta does not grant usage on the per-user role automatically - meaning Immuta does not govern this user's access without manual intervention. If a Snowflake user is created after that user is registered in Immuta, the user account must be disabled and re-enabled to trigger a sync of Immuta policies to govern that user. Whenever possible, Snowflake users should be created before registering those users in Immuta.

• Snowflake tables from imported databases are not supported. Instead, create a view of the table and register that view as a data source.

Custom WHERE clause limitations

The Immuta Snowflake integration uses Snowflake governance features to let users query data natively in Snowflake. This means that Immuta also inherits some Snowflake limitations using correlated subqueries with row access policies and column-level security. These limitations appear when writing custom WHERE policies, but do not remove the utility of row-level policies.

Requirements for a custom WHERE policy

1. All column names must be fully qualified: Any column names that are unqualified (i.e., just the column name) will default to a column of the data source the policy is being applied to (if one matches the name).

2. The Immuta system account must have SELECT privileges on all tables/views referenced in a subquery: The Immuta system role name is specified by the user, and the role is created when the Snowflake instance is integrated.

Subquery limitations

Any subqueries that error in Snowflake will also error in Immuta.

1. Including one or more subqueries in the Immuta policy condition may cause errors in Snowflake. If an error occurs, it may happen during policy creation or at query-time. To avoid these errors, limit the number of subqueries, limit the number of JOIN operations, and simplify WHERE clause conditions.

2. For more information on the Snowflake subquery limitations see

   • Understanding column-level security

   • Understanding row access policies