Rather than do everything ourselves, we outsource tasks to experts. This has been the case for millennia. That same pattern continues to emerge with data security. Organizations have spent decades safeguarding their own data – crucial strategies but no longer sufficient against the security threats of today. The best data security now takes a village.

The data security problem

For the last twenty to thirty years, data has existed primarily in on-premises servers and applications. As a result, organizations have spent vast amounts of money and time to protect that data by hiring from the small pool of available security experts and using products such as security information and event management (SIEM) tools. Unfortunately, these strategies have delivered limited results.

What does true data security require? First and foremost, you must capture and analyze mountains of log data within minutes to find a needle in the haystack before that incursion causes real damage. Most companies can’t afford to do this. Even if they could, there aren’t enough security experts in the industry to hire. But someone has to monitor that activity and take immediate action. But who, with what tools, and how?

Modern data sharing has arrived

The advent of the cloud opened the door for a lower cost and more efficient data infrastructure. Snowflake has kicked that door wide open with innovations such as separating compute from storage and providing instant and infinite data concurrency, which delivers real data democratization.

As cool as that sounds, ensuring hardened data security needed all of that, plus something truly ingenious. Enter Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing. Within our multi-tenant cloud-built data warehouse, organizations can instantly and securely share data across their business units, within their ecosystems, and beyond.

For data security, Secure Data Sharing changes everything. You can now share data with external specialists, or independent analytic vendors (IAVs), that provide specific security services. No single security company specializes in everything, but sharing data with multiple IAVs creates a connected network of data security for your organization to thwart attacks in real time.

To be clear, this data sharing and security strategy isn’t a pipe dream; it’s a full-fledged reality. For the first time ever, an ecosystem exists in Snowflake that augments our security with trusted third-party vendors like Vulcan Cyber. By enriching securely shared data rather than simply providing data, Vulcan customers will have ready access to information that enables them to quickly identify and address security-related anomalies. Learn more in this Snowflake Summit video, featuring Yaniv Bar-Dayan, Vulcan Cyber Cofounder and CEO.

Tested by Snowflake, delivered to you

At Snowflake, we had the same data security challenge most organizations continue to experience. Simply put, we were drowning in data and couldn’t figure out how to analyze it all in an affordable and efficient manner with third-party SIEMs.

For example, we use hundreds of SaaS apps at Snowflake, hundreds of VPCs across multiple cloud providers, and thousands of servers and endpoints. How could we possibly analyze all that activity, gain high fidelity, and take actionable steps to address issues?

That’s when we decided to replace our antiquated SIEM with Snowflake and leverage our low-cost storage, cloud-built architecture, and our Secure Data Sharing feature. By allowing external experts to use our real-time data, we reinforced our security program overnight. And by conducting our own due diligence and certifying the IAVs we use, Snowflake has started to build a connected network of trusted third-party security experts who can consume, monitor, and analyze shared data.

Since these IAVs specialize in areas such as cloud infrastructure and SaaS applications, I can say with confidence we have never been more secure.These IAVs view and analyze our data for us to catch potential security events, and the results have been remarkable.

Security is baked into Snowflake. But that’s just one of many SaaS solutions your organization uses. Soon, we will make this same method of hardening data security available to all of our customers. Through modern, secure and real-time data sharing, Snowflake is enabling organizations to augment their workforces and drive security decisions through a web of experts.

Tap into a network of security expertise

How do you solve the daunting growth of data? You securely share it. How do you secure your organization? You leverage trusted third-party security experts to help your security team.

The silos of yesterday will never keep up with the security threats of today, and any company that acts alone is vulnerable. This transition towards outsourcing tasks once again demonstrates something humans have known for centuries: With a powerful ecosystem comes the ability to utilize networks and specializations for your own good.

Data security will never be the same.

This blog is the introduction to a three-part series that will focus on the independent analytic vendors (IAVs) active with Snowflake. Stay tuned to learn more about the IAVs available today on Snowflake who cover different areas of data security expertise.