Snowflake Partner ALTR Modernizes Data Security and Compliance

As data continues to proliferate across enterprises, the risks surrounding unauthorized access grow exponentially. You need robust, scalable data security that evolves as quickly as your business. ALTR, a Snowflake partner, offers a powerful data security and governance solution tailored for the modern data cloud. With ALTR, you gain real-time data activity monitoring, automated data access controls, and seamless integration with Snowflake's single, integrated platform. Simplify compliance, increase efficiency, and reduce risk by partnering with ALTR. In this article, learn how ALTR enables you to unlock the promise of data analytics while still maintaining control.

Overview of ALTR and Partnership With Snowflake

Modern data protection and compliance

ALTR is a data security and compliance solution built for the cloud. It provides advanced protection for sensitive data and enforces granular access control across data platforms. ALTR's platform integrates with Snowflake to secure data in near real-time and simplify compliance processes.

Granular access control and monitoring

ALTR enables role-based access control (RBAC) and user activity monitoring (UAM) for Snowflake. This provides granular control over data access and generates alerts for anomalous behavior. ALTR can detect and prevent unauthorized access to data and monitor all user activity for auditing and compliance purposes.

Automated data classification

ALTR uses machine learning to analyze data and automatically apply classification labels in Snowflake. This reduces the time and resources required to manually classify data while still providing an accurate assessment of data sensitivity. Classifications and security policies can then be enforced to restrict access to sensitive data.

Strong encryption and key management

ALTR leverages strong encryption and key management to protect data at rest in Snowflake. Encryption keys are stored separately from the data to prevent unauthorized access. ALTR also allows the rotation of encryption keys on a regular basis without impacting data access. This added layer of protection and control helps organizations achieve compliance with data security regulations.

A strategic partnership

ALTR and Snowflake have established a strategic partnership to provide customers with robust data security and governance solutions. The integration of ALTR’s platform with Snowflake delivers advanced data protection, granular access control, and simplified compliance for organizations across industries. Together, ALTR and Snowflake are enabling data-driven businesses to unlock the full potential of their data in a secure and regulated manner.

ALTR's Approach to Data Security and Compliance

Automated, tag-based access controls on sensitive data

ALTR provides granular, attribute-based access control (ABAC) through automated tagging and policy enforcement. ALTR scans data sources to automatically apply sensitivity tags based on data classification policies. These tags are then used to control access based on a user’s attributes and the sensitivity of the data. This ensures only authorized users have access to sensitive data.

Continuous monitoring and auditing

ALTR also provides continuous monitoring and auditing of how data is being accessed and used. ALTR generates audit trails and alerts for both regular user access as well as any policy violations. These alerts can be sent to SIEM solutions for monitoring and response. The audit logs provide details on who accessed what data, when and how for compliance reporting and forensic investigations.

Flexible deployment options

ALTR is deployed as a SaaS-based data security and compliance solution and integrates natively with Snowflake's platform. However, ALTR can also be deployed on-premises or in hybrid environments for customers with specific data governance needs. ALTR aims to provide a seamless experience regardless of deployment model.

Risk-based policy recommendations

ALTR provides AI-based policy optimization by analyzing access patterns and recommending policy changes to reduce risk. ALTR looks for overly permissive policies, dormant users, and segregation of duties violations to recommend the minimum set of policy changes to strengthen data security controls. These recommendations help organizations take a risk-based approach to data governance.

In summary, ALTR modernizes data security and compliance through a combination of attribute-based access control, data monitoring, policy optimization and flexible deployment options. By automating and simplifying data protection, ALTR helps organizations govern sensitive data at scale while mitigating risks.

Key Features of ALTR's Platform

Data Classification

ALTR provides automated data classification to categorize sensitive data based on configurable rules and ML models. This allows organizations to identify, organize and protect sensitive data at scale. ALTR’s data classification engine can detect sensitive data across databases, files and cloud services.

Role-Based Access Control

ALTR offers a robust RBAC solution to control access to data based on user roles and responsibilities. ALTR provides pre-built roles for data security and compliance, which can be customized as needed. ALTR monitors all data access and usage to provide visibility into who is accessing what data.

Data Activity Monitoring

ALTR monitors all data access and usage in near real-time to detect anomalous behavior. ALTR detects risky user behavior such as accessing sensitive data outside of business hours or downloading large amounts of sensitive data. ALTR also monitors failed login attempts, admin activity and configuration changes for signs of compromised accounts or insider threats.

Data Protection

ALTR encrypts sensitive data at rest to prevent unauthorized access. ALTR leverages envelope encryption to protect data within databases without impacting applications or database performance. ALTR also provides format-preserving encryption for protecting sensitive data within databases while maintaining the ability to sort, filter and join on encrypted values. Encryption keys are stored separately from the data to prevent unauthorized decryption.

ALTR's platform provides advanced data security and compliance solutions for Snowflake's Data Cloud. By combining data classification, role-based access control, data activity monitoring and data encryption, ALTR helps organizations simplify data governance, accelerate compliance and mitigate data risks in the Snowflake Data Cloud. Overall, ALTR's key features allow for improved data protection, reduced compliance burden and streamlined auditing within Snowflake.

Automated Data Access Policies

As a Snowflake Partner, ALTR enables automated data access policies for Snowflake customers. ALTR’s platform leverages machine learning and natural language processing to analyze data, classify sensitive information, and automatically generate data access policies tailored to your organization’s needs.

Reduce Complexity

ALTR reduces the complexity of managing data access policies through automation. Rather than relying on static rules defined by administrators, ALTR dynamically adapts policies to your data. This eliminates the need for manual policy configuration and maintenance.

Increase Efficiency

ALTR increases efficiency by automatically generating data access policies tailored to your organization’s needs.The platform analyzes your data to detect sensitive information and patterns of access, then recommends policies to optimize data protection and access. This reduces the time required for administrators to manually analyze data and define appropriate policies.

Manage Risk

By generating data access policies attuned to the sensitivity of your data, ALTR helps manage data privacy and security risks. The platform detects personal information, financial data, health records, and other sensitive data types that require protection. It then recommends policies to govern access, masking or excluding sensitive data as needed to mitigate risk.

Overall, ALTR aims to simplify data access policy management for Snowflake customers through an automated and intelligent platform. By reducing complexity, increasing efficiency, and managing risk, ALTR enables stronger data protection and compliance. With ALTR, Snowflake users can implement automated data access policies to optimize secure data access across their organization.

Advanced Data Encryption Capabilities

ALTR provides robust data encryption capabilities to protect sensitive data for Snowflake customers. With ALTR, organizations can implement strong encryption to secure data in transit and at rest.

Data in Transit

When transferring data into and out of the Snowflake platform, ALTR encrypts all network communication using industry-standard Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS provides encryption between the client and the ALTR service to protect data as it moves across networks.

Data at Rest

ALTR also provides column-level encryption for data stored in Snowflake, encrypting sensitive data fields and columns while leaving non-sensitive data in the clear. This fine-grained encryption reduces performance impact since only a subset of data is encrypted. ALTR uses strong encryption algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys to encrypt data.

Key Management

ALTR gives organizations control over encryption keys used to protect their data. Customers can generate and manage keys in ALTR, or they can integrate with an external key management service. When a key is rotated or revoked, ALTR re-encrypts all associated data with the new key. Strict key management policies and regular key rotation help ensure maximum data security.

Compliance and Governance

ALTR provides governance and compliance features to manage data protection policies, monitor access, and generate audit reports. Administrators can define granular access control policies to encrypt specific columns or rows and grant access to authorized users. ALTR logs all access to encrypted data and can produce detailed audit reports for compliance audits. These capabilities help organizations comply with regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and CCPA.

In summary, ALTR delivers a robust set of data encryption and governance features to help secure sensitive data in Snowflake. With ALTR, organizations can implement end-to-end encryption, enforce strict access control, and gain visibility into data access for compliance. By leveraging ALTR, Snowflake customers can reduce risk and ensure their data privacy and security objectives are met.

Real-Time Monitoring and Alerting

ALTR's real-time monitoring and alerting features allow organizations to gain visibility into data access and changes, enabling a proactive approach to risk management. The solution provides real-time alerts and dashboards to monitor all data activity, including access, queries, and modifications across your Snowflake data warehouse.

Continuous Monitoring

ALTR continuously monitors all data activity in your Snowflake data warehouse, including access, queries, and changes. It captures comprehensive audit logs for all user and system interactions with your data. ALTR then analyzes these logs using machine learning to detect anomalous behavior and surface critical insights. The solution also monitors data at rest to detect any unauthorized changes.

Customized Alerts

ALTR enables you to set customized alerts based on your organization's risk tolerance and compliance requirements. You can configure alerts for specific users, resources, queries, geographic locations, and time periods. ALTR will notify you in real time if there are any policy violations or suspicious data access events via email, SMS, or integrations with SIEM tools like Splunk. These customized alerts provide an additional layer of protection for your sensitive data.

Interactive Dashboards

ALTR provides interactive dashboards that offer visibility into your data landscape, access activity, risk exposure, and compliance posture. The dashboards display metrics, reports, and visualizations that allow you to analyze trends, spot issues, and make data-driven decisions to strengthen your data governance program. They give you a high-level overview of risks across your Snowflake deployment as well as the ability to drill down into specific areas of concern.

SIEM Integrations

ALTR integrates with leading SIEM solutions such as Splunk to provide comprehensive insights into your Snowflake data warehouse. By streaming real-time alerts and audit logs to your SIEM, ALTR enables correlation of data access events with other security information as well as advanced analytics, reporting and threat detection. The integration of ALTR with SIEM tools provides a single pane of glass to monitor risks across your infrastructure.

In summary, ALTR delivers continuous, comprehensive monitoring of your Snowflake data warehouse and real-time alerts to help strengthen your data governance, reduce risk, and ensure compliance. The solution gives you visibility and control over access and changes to your sensitive data.

Integration and Interoperability With Data Platforms

###Seamless Integration ALTR integrates seamlessly with Snowflake's modern data platform to provide robust data security and governance capabilities. As a certified partner, ALTR's solution is pre-integrated with Snowflake, allowing users to leverage its functionality directly within the Snowflake console. This deep integration enables simplified policy definition, monitoring, and alerting across your Snowflake data ecosystem.

Compatibility With Data Tools

ALTR is compatible with popular business intelligence, ETL, and data catalog tools for streamlined data governance. Its open API and event-driven architecture allow ALTR to interoperate with a wide range of third-party solutions. ALTR can ingest metadata from data catalogs to auto-classify and apply policies to data. It can also consume job run logs from ETL tools to monitor data access and changes. These integrations provide end-to-end visibility and control over your data processing pipeline.

SIEM Integrations

ALTR offers out-of-the-box integrations with leading security information and event management (SIEM) platforms such as Splunk and ArcSight. ALTR sends near real-time data access alerts and events to your SIEM for detection of anomalous activity. By funneling ALTR events into your SIEM, security teams gain valuable insight into data usage across the organization and can take action to mitigate potential threats. The SIEM integrations, along with ALTR's native monitoring capabilities, provide comprehensive observability to help manage risk and enforce compliance.

In summary, ALTR's seamless integration with data platforms, compatibility with data tools, and SIEM integrations enable a cohesive data governance strategy. With ALTR, organizations can leverage a single solution to gain control and visibility over their entire data landscape in Snowflake and beyond. By eliminating data silos, ALTR provides a holistic approach to protecting one of your most valuable assets.

Customer Success Stories With ALTR

ALTR has helped numerous organizations in various industries enhance their data security and compliance. By implementing ALTR’s data monitoring solution, companies have been able to reduce risk, increase efficiency, and simplify compliance.

For example, ALTR assisted a U.S.-based healthcare company in improving its data privacy compliance. With ALTR’s real-time data monitoring, the healthcare organization gained visibility into how sensitive patient data was being accessed and used across its cloud data platform. ALTR’s solution helped the company identify improper data use, allowing them to take corrective action, tighten controls, and avoid potential compliance violations.

Similarly, a multinational financial services firm leveraged ALTR to strengthen its data governance program. ALTR’s platform gave the company real-time insights into how regulated customer data was accessed and transferred between internal teams and external third parties. With an understanding of normal access patterns, the financial firm could detect anomalous data use and understand how to limit unnecessary data exposure.

ALTR also helped a public university address its growing data privacy concerns. As the university migrated more sensitive research and student data to the cloud, it needed a way to monitor access and use. ALTR’s solution provided visibility across the university’s cloud data platform, enabling the school to identify improper data access, tighten security controls, and avoid potential data breaches.

In summary, ALTR has a proven track record of helping organizations in healthcare, financial services, education, and other industries:

•Reduce risk by detecting anomalous data access and use •Increase efficiency through streamlined compliance processes •Simplify compliance with a single view of data activity across hybrid cloud environments •Take corrective action to tighten data controls and limit exposure

ALTR’s data monitoring solution gives companies the visibility and control they need to strengthen data security, privacy, and governance programs. With ALTR as a partner, organizations can have confidence in how data is accessed and used across their cloud platforms.

Conclusion

As we have seen, ALTR enables modern data security and compliance for the data-driven enterprise. By combining advanced data classification, granular access controls, activity monitoring, and encryption to safeguard sensitive data, ALTR allows organizations to fully leverage the power of their data. With its seamless integrations, real-time risk mitigation, and unparalleled data observability, ALTR is the ideal solution for any business looking to securely embrace data analytics and AI while remaining compliant. Though challenges remain, ALTR's innovative approach represents the future of data security. With the right technology partner, your company can confidently pursue data-driven transformation.