Automatic Encryption of Data

Hopefully you had a chance to read our previous top 10 posts. As promised, we continue the series with a deeper dive into another of the Top 10 Cool Features from Snowflake:

One of the biggest worries people have about moving to the cloud is security. One key piece of providing enterprise class security is the ability to encrypt the data in your data warehouse environment. With Snowflake, your data is automatically encrypted by default.

No setup, no configuration, no add-on costs for high security features. Data is encrypted during its entire lifecycle. From loading data to storing data at rest, we apply end-to-end encryption, such that only the customer can read the data, and no one else. It is just part of the Snowflake service! That is a huge win for anyone who has ever tried to set up database security of any kind. In addition, this gives Snowflake a significant advantage compared to environments like Hadoop, where encryption and security is almost almost entirely left up to the customer to implement and maintain.

So what level of encryption?

For all data within Snowflake, we use strong AES 256-bit keys. Your data is encrypted as you load it. That is the default, and you cannot turn it off. In addition, our Snowflake security framework includes additional security best practices such as the use of a hierarchical key model and regular key rotation. All of this is automatic and transparent to our customers. In this way we provide our customers best-in-class data security as a service. For even more details on our approach to end-to-end encryption and how we secure your data, check out these blogs; end to end encryption and encryption key management.

Remember the #10 Top feature – persistent result sets? Well those query results are also encrypted with 256-bit encryption keys (all the data, all the time).

So do you have your data at rest encrypted in your data warehouse today? Are your loading tools, and staging environments also encrypted?

If not, then put your data into the Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse and rest easy knowing your data is safe and secure. Snowflake brings enterprise grade security to data warehousing in the cloud, with end-to-end encryption as a major part of our offering.

As a co-writer of this series, I would like to thank Kent Graziano, who has put in a lot of effort into bringing the thoughts behind this series to the audience. Without his persistence and vision, this would not have been possible. As always, keep an eye on this blog site, our Snowflake Twitter feed (@SnowflakeDB), (@kentgraziano), and (@cloudsommelier) for more Top 10 Cool Things About Snowflake and for updates on all the action and activities here at Snowflake Computing.

Kent Graziano and Saqib Mustafa