SnowPro Advanced: Security Engineer Question 329
Select 3Assess the security of data sharing agreements and configurations with external partnersA Snowflake security engineer is reviewing a planned secure data-sharing arrangement with an external partner. The provider account will share a database containing sales data through a direct share. The partner only needs access to two reporting views, and the provider must minimize the risk of exposing underlying objects, future schema changes, and sensitive row-level data. Which TWO actions should the engineer recommend to best assess and strengthen the security of this sharing configuration?
- A
Create a dedicated shared database that exposes only secure views required by the partner, and grant the share access only to that database.
- B
Use regular views on top of the source tables because direct shares prevent consumers from seeing view definitions anyway.
- C
Validate whether row access policies and masking policies on the underlying objects will apply to shared data before approving the share.
- D
Grant IMPORTED PRIVILEGES on the provider database to the partner so the partner can inherit only the minimum required permissions.
- E
Review whether future grants or broad object grants could unintentionally add new schemas, tables, or views to the share over time.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C, E
Explanation
The best answers are 1, 3, and 5 because they address the primary security risks in external sharing: excessive exposure, policy enforcement, and unintended expansion of scope over time. In Snowflake, secure data sharing should follow least privilege by exposing only specifically approved objects, commonly through secure views rather than raw tables when abstraction or filtering is needed. Secure views are the recommended mechanism for safely sharing derived datasets with consumers.
A proper assessment must also confirm that any row access policies and masking policies applied to underlying shared objects behave as expected for the consumer. This is especially important when the provider's requirement includes protecting sensitive row-level data.
Finally, reviewing grants and future grants is essential. Even if the initial configuration is correct, future schemas or objects may become exposed if the provider uses broad grant patterns carelessly. Snowflake best practices emphasize controlled object exposure, least privilege, and validation of governance controls before sharing data externally.
Relevant Snowflake documentation and best-practice areas include Secure Data Sharing, secure views, row access policies, dynamic data masking, and grant management for shares.
- A. Correct.
Correct. A core best practice for secure data sharing is to isolate what is shared and expose only the minimum necessary objects. Using a dedicated database or dedicated share-facing schema design reduces the chance of accidentally exposing additional objects. Secure views are especially important because they are designed for controlled data sharing scenarios and help prevent certain forms of information leakage through query optimization behavior.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Regular views are not appropriate for this scenario when sharing with external consumers. Snowflake requires secure views for data sharing to consumers in these controlled scenarios. Assuming that consumers cannot infer or access sensitive details through regular views reflects a misunderstanding of how Snowflake protects shared view-based access.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Security review must include policy behavior on shared data. If the provider relies on row access policies and masking policies to restrict what external users can see, the engineer must verify that those policies are correctly applied to the shared objects and produce the intended results for the consumer context. This is critical when the partner should only see a subset of sensitive data.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. IMPORTED PRIVILEGES is used by consumer accounts to access privileges from a shared database after the share is created; it is not something the provider grants to limit access within the provider account. It also does not solve the provider-side risk of exposing too many objects or future changes in the shared dataset.
- E. Correct.
Correct. A strong security assessment must look beyond current objects and evaluate how configuration drift could expand partner access later. Broad grants and future grants can cause new objects to become available unintentionally. Reviewing and limiting these grants helps ensure that only the intended two reporting views remain exposed.