Case Study
Stemcell
A Journey from Chaos to Clarity
About the client
Stemcell is a Canadian biotechnology company that develops, manufactures, and sells scientific instruments, reagents, and consumables. The company also markets education, custom manufacturing, and contract assay services for academic and industrial scientists.
Key Outcome
Infostrux worked to streamline and clean up existing roles to standardize RBAC across all databases and environments to allow for schema-level access control. In addition, Infostrux implemented data governance through security tags and tag-based masking policies in an automated and reliable fashion.
What was their key challenge?
The primary challenge of Stemcell was ensuring that sensitive data was properly masked for restricted roles and user groups. Achieving this goal was specifically challenging because tags and masking policies in Snowflake are tied to the objects that would get recreated and replaced by DBT, resulting in these security measures not being persistent.How Infostrux helped
To ensure role structure follows best practices and the organization's standards, we reviewed all existing roles in all environments and removed the ones that did not follow the standards. We then created some new roles based on best practices while ensuring that access to these roles can be restricted and controlled at the schema level.
To solve Stemcell’s data masking challenge, we developed a DBT macro that would automatically re-assign the tags to objects after they are recreated. To ensure the gap between when the objects are created and when the tags are assigned remains as short as possible, the macro would run as a post-hook. This approach also enabled us to develop a centralized data governance location where all tags and their values are stored. Any modification can only be done through the proper tag admin role. After these security tags are placed on the necessary objects, the tag-based masking policies created by the tag admin role would properly mask the data for restricted roles.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this case study illuminates the remarkable journey of retail client who, through the integration of cutting-edge technology and expert guidance, successfully overcame complex data infrastructure challenges.
The transition from outdated data structures to a streamlined, efficient data ecosystem demonstrates the power of innovative solutions and collaborative efforts, highlighting the transformative potential of modern data management practices for businesses seeking to enhance data accessibility and reliability.
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