Snowflake Data Masking: How It’s Used & How It Works with Perforce Delphix

Snowflake data masking offers a practical and cost-effective solution to mitigate data risk in your non-production Snowflake environments. Enterprises who want to get an even better balance of compliance, quality, and speed add solutions to enhance native Snowflake masking. 

In this blog, let’s explore how data masking works in Snowflake, how it’s used in various industries, and what you need in a compliance-focused enterprise. 

What is Data Masking in Snowflake?

Snowflake dynamic data masking is a built-in feature that protects sensitive data by obfuscating or anonymizing it for specific users or roles. This allows data to be automatically changed based on the user’s role or privileges, without modifying the underlying, “real” data. 

When enabled, native Snowflake masking ensures that users only see the data they are authorized to view, with masked values displayed in place of sensitive information based on the masking function applied on the entities. 

Why Data Masking is Important in Snowflake

In Snowflake, Cortex AI uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate data processing, enrich analytics workflows, and simplify the creation of predictive models — without moving the data outside of Snowflake. 

Data masking is really important for analytics and AI model training. It allows sensitive information to be obscured or anonymized while maintaining usability for analytics purposes. By applying data masking techniques, your organization can ensure data privacy and security, especially when working with personally identifiable information (PII) or otherwise sensitive data. And you can mask data all while still enabling analysis and training of those machine learning models. 

📘 Further reading: The AI Compliance Crisis: Are You Prepared?

Real-World Applications for Snowflake Data Masking

Just as Snowflake offers enterprises scalability and efficiency in data analytics, Snowflake data masking offers security and compliance. 

Below are a few real-world examples of how Snowflake data masking is applied across different sectors:

Financial Services

In the financial industry, data masking protects sensitive customer information, such as account numbers or transaction details. 

For example, when analysts query a dataset that contains PII, masking ensures that only authorized users (e.g., senior staff or compliance officers) can view full account numbers.  Others may only see partial or masked data, like the last four digits.

Healthcare

In healthcare, data masking protects patient data, such as medical records or insurance information, while allowing authorized personnel to perform necessary analysis. 

For instance, when researchers access a dataset for analytics or model training, masking ensures they only see anonymized patient information. This ensures compliance with HIPAA and safeguarding patient privacy during the development of predictive healthcare models.

Retail

In the retail sector, data masking secures credit card details or purchase history, so it is not exposed to unauthorized employees. 

When customer support staff access a database for troubleshooting, masking can obscure sensitive purchase information. This ensures compliance with data privacy laws like GDPR, while still enabling support personnel to perform their tasks.

Why Snowflake Data Masking May Fall Short for Compliance-Focused Enterprises

While native Snowflake data masking offers security, it also creates challenges. Implementing and managing masking policies is complex, especially in large organizations with diverse user roles and access to levels. Additionally, while the real-time application of masking in Snowflake ensures security, it may introduce some performance overhead — especially with complex queries or large datasets, or both. 

Businesses have to carefully balance security with usability. Manually-written complex masking policies can hinder analytics, model training, or business decision-making, potentially impacting overall business outcomes.

Lastly, masking leaves the production data as-is in the non-production Snowflake environments. Many large companies have a strict policy of not using production data in non-production. This policy reduces the overall risk to customer data, and you can’t necessarily meet this policy with Snowflake’s native masking. 

📘Further reading: Static Data Masking vs. Dynamic Data Masking

The Ideal Solution for Snowflake Data Masking in Enterprises

Adding static data masking to Snowflake is an ideal solution for enterprises. Static data masking permanently replaces sensitive data with realistic yet fictitious data. It maintains referential integrity to the “real” data, but it ensures that the original data is not accessible to any users. 

Using this type of masking for Snowflake makes compliance easier. It ensures sensitive information is fully protected across all environments. 

The benefits of static masking for Snowflake are especially valuable in AI and analytics  environments. 

No Real-Time Overhead 

Using static masking for Snowflake permanently modifies sensitive data, which means that there is no additional processing required during queries or data access. Native dynamic masking in Snowflake introduces real-time overhead and potentially slows down complex queries — especially when working with large datasets or high-volume transactions.

Faster Query Performance 

Static masking does not require any runtime transformation of data in Snowflake. As a result, queries are processed faster than native masking, which needs to assess user roles and apply masking rules during every query execution. This speed advantage is crucial in AI and analytics tasks where performance is a key requirement.

Consistency in Data Processing 

With static masking for Snowflake, the masked data is stored in the database, ensuring consistency in the way sensitive data is represented across various applications and processes. This consistency leads to faster data access and model training, as there’s no need to reapply masking rules at every stage, as would be the case with native Snowflake masking.

Optimized for Large Scale Datasets 

In AI model development, working with large datasets is common. Using static masking ensures that these datasets are ready for analysis without the performance hits caused by runtime masking in Snowflake. AI models benefit from the unimpeded speed in data retrieval and processing when static masking is used, allowing quicker model training and experimentation.

Ability to Incrementally Mask Upstream Data Feeds 

Because Snowflake is an analytical environment, it continually receives data from existing or new data sources. With Perforce Delphix masking, you can mask only the changed data before loading it to non-production, so they don’t need to mask the full data sets on Snowflake with incremental changes. They mask Snowflake non-production once, and load only masked data. 

Stay Ahead in AI & Analytics

Balancing compliance, data quality, and speed is possible. Find practical strategies for mitigating AI risks, managing sensitive data, and ensuring compliance, all while maximizing performance. Download “AI Without Compromise,” a guide from Perforce Delphix’s resident AI and data security expert, Steve Karam.

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Masking Snowflake Data with Perforce Delphix

Perforce Delphix automates compliant data for DevOps. Delphix offers advanced data masking capabilities, enabling enterprises to protect sensitive information while maintaining its usability for analytics, testing, and development. 

Discover more >> What Is Delphix?

When integrated with Snowflake, Delphix provides a streamlined solution for data masking, allowing businesses to comply with data privacy regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS, while ensuring that data remains useful for a wide range of business functions. Key capabilities of Delphix data masking for Snowflake include the following.

Automated Data Masking

Delphix allows organizations to automate the process of data masking for Snowflake environments, applying consistent and secure masking policies across all datasets. 

Regulation Specific Algorithms

Delphix offers a range of powerful, out-of-the-box algorithms to automate and simplify the data masking process. These algorithms are designed to obfuscate sensitive information while preserving data integrity and usability for analytics, testing, and development.

Customized Frameworks

Delphix provides powerful compliance capabilities that allow organizations to create custom data masking algorithms tailored to their specific requirements, all without needing to write a single line of code. Using Delphix compliance intuitive frameworks, users can easily define new masking logic based on business rules or regulatory needs.

Referential Integrity

Delphix ensures that referential integrity is maintained across datasets and applications by using deterministic and consistent masking. This means that when sensitive data is masked, related values in different tables or systems are masked in a way that preserves their relationships and structure. This ensures integrity after masking across Snowflake and relevant data sources. 

Delphix’s approach guarantees that masked data remains logically consistent, so businesses can confidently share and analyze data without risking data mismatches or broken relationships, all while adhering to regulatory compliance standards.

Cost-Effective Data Export & Import

Our Snowflake data masking solution offers efficient data export and import capabilities by leveraging Snowflake's built-in functions. Importantly, our architecture won't incur additional Snowflake compute costs, as data masking is performed without executing any queries. Instead, all data transformation takes place within the AWS S3 integration with Snowflake storage.

Demo Perforce Delphix Data Masking

With Perforce Delphix AI compliance solutions, businesses can ensure their Snowflake data is masked at scale without compromising performance or compliance.

Your organization will be able to meet stringent data privacy regulations, secure sensitive information across Snowflake environments, and scale data management efficiently — all while using Snowflake’s advanced analytics capabilities.

See for yourself how Delphix can enable fast, compliant data masking for Snowflake environments. Contact us to get started with a Snowflake masking demo.

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