SnowPro Advanced: Security Engineer Question 172
Single answerAlign retention policies with compliance requirements (for example, GDPR and HIPAA)A healthcare analytics company stores patient records in Snowflake and must support two conflicting compliance requirements: HIPAA requires retaining certain audit and clinical data for multiple years, while GDPR requires deleting personal data when there is no longer a lawful basis to keep it. The security engineer is asked to design a Snowflake-based approach that minimizes compliance risk while preserving the ability to recover from accidental changes. Which approach BEST aligns Snowflake retention capabilities with these requirements?
- A
Set a long DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS value on all databases and schemas so deleted personal data can always be recovered if needed for audits.
- B
Use shorter Time Travel retention for tables containing GDPR-regulated personal data, define lifecycle processes to delete or de-identify that data when no longer required, and retain required HIPAA records only in the specific objects that must be preserved.
- C
Disable Fail-safe by moving GDPR-regulated data into transient tables, because transient tables remove all recovery metadata immediately after deletion and therefore satisfy both HIPAA and GDPR.
- D
Rely on masking policies for GDPR requests, because once a column is masked Snowflake no longer retains the underlying personal data for compliance purposes.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The best answer is to apply retention selectively based on legal and business requirements rather than using one blanket setting. In Snowflake, DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS governs Time Travel retention and can be set at multiple object levels, which supports differentiated handling for datasets with different compliance obligations. For GDPR-regulated personal data, organizations should minimize retention and implement deletion or de-identification workflows when data is no longer needed. For HIPAA-related records that must be retained, longer retention should be applied only where necessary. Candidates should also know that transient objects remove Fail-safe but still have Time Travel, and masking policies do not delete data. This reflects Snowflake best practices around least privilege, data minimization, and object-level lifecycle control.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Applying long Time Travel retention broadly increases the period during which deleted personal data remains recoverable in Snowflake. That may conflict with GDPR data minimization and erasure objectives when there is no lawful basis to continue retaining the data. It also applies retention too broadly instead of limiting it to records that must be preserved for HIPAA or business requirements.
- B. Correct.
Correct. This approach aligns retention to the data's regulatory purpose. Snowflake allows configuring DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS at the account, database, schema, and table levels, so sensitive GDPR data can have a shorter retention window while records subject to longer healthcare retention obligations can be retained in the specific objects that require it. Deletion or de-identification processes address GDPR obligations, and narrower Time Travel settings reduce the window during which deleted data remains accessible through historical recovery features.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Transient tables do not have Fail-safe, which can help reduce extended recoverability, but they still support Time Travel with a retention period and do not remove recovery metadata immediately after deletion. More importantly, using transient tables alone does not satisfy HIPAA retention requirements for records that must be preserved for years, so this does not address both requirements together.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Dynamic data masking controls query-time visibility, not data lifecycle or deletion. Masked data still exists in the underlying table and remains subject to retention, Time Travel, and storage behavior. Masking is useful for least-privilege access but does not by itself fulfill GDPR erasure requirements.