SnowPro Advanced: Security Engineer Question 301
Single answerSecurity certificationsA security engineer at a healthcare analytics company must complete a third-party risk questionnaire for a prospective customer. The customer asks whether Snowflake itself holds security certifications and attestations that can support the company’s compliance review. The engineer wants to provide an accurate response without overstating what Snowflake certifications mean for the customer’s own environment. Which statement is the MOST accurate?
- A
Snowflake maintains multiple third-party security certifications and attestations, such as SOC reports and ISO certifications, but customers are still responsible for evaluating how their own Snowflake configurations and data handling meet their regulatory and compliance obligations.
- B
Because Snowflake is certified under major security frameworks, any customer workload deployed in Snowflake automatically inherits full compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR without additional customer controls.
- C
Snowflake does not provide externally audited security certifications; instead, customers must rely only on Snowflake documentation and internal whitepapers when answering security questionnaires.
- D
Snowflake certifications apply only to Snowflake corporate IT systems and are not relevant to the Snowflake service that stores and processes customer data.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The key applied concept is understanding the difference between Snowflake’s security certifications/attestations and a customer’s own compliance posture. In real customer assessments, the best answer is that Snowflake provides independently assessed assurance artifacts, but these do not automatically certify every customer workload as compliant. This aligns with cloud shared responsibility principles and Snowflake security best practices: Snowflake secures and attests aspects of the service, while customers remain responsible for configuring security features appropriately, managing identities and roles, applying data governance, and ensuring their specific use case meets applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Candidates should recognize that security certifications support vendor risk assessments, but they are not a blanket compliance transfer. Relevant Snowflake documentation typically includes trust/compliance materials, security overview content, and guidance around customer responsibilities for secure configuration and governance.
- A. Correct.
Correct. This is the most accurate and practical statement. Snowflake does maintain recognized third-party certifications and attestations, including examples such as SOC reports and ISO certifications, which can help customers with vendor assessments. However, these do not transfer full compliance responsibility to the customer automatically. Under the shared responsibility model, customers remain accountable for how they configure access controls, govern data, manage keys where applicable, and use Snowflake features in support of their own legal and regulatory obligations.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This reflects a common misconception that a cloud provider’s certifications automatically make every customer deployment compliant. Snowflake certifications and attestations demonstrate controls at the service-provider level, but customer compliance depends on the customer’s own implementation, governance, data classification, user access, monitoring, retention, and contractual/regulatory scope. Regulations such as GDPR are not achieved through certification inheritance alone.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Snowflake does provide externally validated security and compliance materials, including third-party attestations and certifications. Saying that customers can rely only on internal whitepapers is inaccurate and would underrepresent the assurance artifacts Snowflake makes available for due diligence and audit support.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This option incorrectly minimizes the relevance of Snowflake’s certifications. Security certifications and attestations are specifically important to customers because they help demonstrate the control environment surrounding the Snowflake service. While not a substitute for customer controls, they are highly relevant to environments where customer data is processed and stored.