SnowPro Advanced: Security Engineer Question 274
Select 2Security-related implicationsA financial services company stores highly sensitive customer data in Snowflake and uses Secure Data Sharing to provide a subset of that data to an external auditing partner. The security team must reduce the risk of unintentionally exposing internal metadata or logic through the shared objects while still allowing the partner to query the data. Which TWO actions best address the security-related implications of this requirement?
- A
Create SECURE views to expose only the required rows and columns before adding them to the share.
- B
Use standard views because view definitions are not visible to data consumers in a share.
- C
Use a SECURE UDF or SECURE view where logic itself should be hidden from the consumer.
- D
Grant the auditing partner the IMPORTED PRIVILEGES privilege on the provider account so they can only see shared data.
- E
Share the base tables directly and rely on the consumer account's role hierarchy to prevent access to sensitive columns.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C
Explanation
The best answers are to use SECURE views and, where applicable, SECURE UDFs. In Snowflake, secure objects are designed to help prevent exposure of sensitive implementation details and to provide stronger guarantees around data sharing scenarios. For external sharing, providers should avoid sharing base tables when only a subset of data is required. Instead, they should publish controlled interfaces such as SECURE views that expose only the needed rows and columns. If transformation or filtering logic is sensitive, SECURE UDFs or SECURE views help protect that logic from consumers. By contrast, IMPORTED PRIVILEGES is a consumer-side privilege used to access shared databases; it does not solve provider-side metadata protection. This aligns with Snowflake best practices for Secure Data Sharing and the documented purpose of secure objects such as SECURE views and SECURE UDFs.
- A. Correct.
Correct. SECURE views are specifically designed to protect sensitive details that could otherwise be exposed through query behavior or metadata. In a data sharing scenario, using a SECURE view is a best practice when the provider wants to expose only a controlled projection of data, such as masking certain columns or filtering rows, without revealing unnecessary implementation details.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Standard views are not the safest choice when there is concern about exposing underlying logic or metadata. Snowflake provides SECURE views for cases where additional protection is needed. Choosing a standard view reflects the misconception that all views offer the same security characteristics in sharing scenarios.
- C. Correct.
Correct. SECURE UDFs and SECURE views are intended for situations where the logic itself should not be exposed to consumers. This is relevant when business rules, proprietary transformations, or security filters must remain hidden while still allowing shared access to the resulting data.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. IMPORTED PRIVILEGES is granted in the consumer account on a shared database so consumer roles can use objects from that shared database. It is not a mechanism the provider uses to hide metadata or logic, and it is not granted on the provider account to limit visibility in the way described.
- E. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Sharing base tables directly increases the risk of exposing more data than intended because consumers can access all columns in the shared table that are included in the share. The consumer's internal role hierarchy cannot enforce provider-side column filtering. The provider must restrict exposure before sharing, typically with secure views.