With data volumes growing exponentially, organizations across industries are implementing data lakes to aggregate diverse data sets. But, this massive centralization of data can quickly turn into a liability without data access management. Data lakes often accumulate sensitive data such as customer details, financials, intellectual property, and more. Unfettered access by unauthorized users can lead to catastrophic data breaches or compliance violations.
A comprehensive data lake access control policy outlines authentication methods, entitlements and permissions, and compliance procedures. This creates a clear procedure for employees to follow when accessing data lakes.
To help you implement a robust data lake access control policy, this article covers the following topics:
What is a Data Lake Access Policy?
A data lake access policy is a set of rules and guidelines that determine how users and applications can access and interact with data stored in a company’s data lake. For example an Azure data lake access control policy outlines who can access the data lake, what data they can access, and what they can do with the data (e.g. view, edit, delete).
Why Do You Need an Access Policy?
There are several key reasons why a well-defined data access policy is critical:
- Protect sensitive data: A data lake can contain sensitive customer data. But, without stringent data access controls, these sensitive data sets become vulnerable to abuse or theft. Maintaining a data lake access policy ensures access controls remain secure.
- Prevent insider threats: Even employees with good intentions can wreak havoc if given unrestricted data lake access. A clearly defined policy protects against both accidental and intentional data manipulation by internal team members.
- Maintain regulatory compliance: Data privacy regulations typically mandate privacy safeguards and careful oversight of data use. An access policy codifies data handling practices compliant with relevant regulations.
- Support auditing: Auditing activities like reviewing system access logs, user permissions, and activity patterns require a policy baseline to audit against. The access policy enables governance teams to perform oversight duties.
- Ensure accountability: By linking access privileges to individual users and systems, accountability is ingrained into data lake interactions. Any violations can be traced back to exactly who is responsible.
- Manage third-party risks: Third-party partners necessitate different data permissions than internal employees. Granular access controls in a policy reduce the risks associated with external collaborators.
Key Components of a Data Access Policy
A comprehensive data lake access policy contains controls over:
Authentication Methods
The policy should mandate strong authentication requirements to validate user identities beyond just usernames and passwords. Options include:
- Multi-factor authentication: Requiring an additional factor like one-time codes or biometrics prevents unauthorized logins even with compromised credentials.
- Single sign-on: Linking cloud data lake access to existing enterprise single sign-on provides a secure and convenient login experience for employees.
- API keys: Machine-to-machine connections can be granted API keys to identify trusted programs without human logins. Keys should be rotated periodically.
Authorization and Entitlements
Once identities are authenticated, the next step is authorization to allow or restrict access to specific resources like files, folders, databases, etc. A few common ways to manage authorizations and entitlements include:
- Role-based access control (RBAC): RBAC associates user roles with permitted data lake actions. This simplifies permissioning compared to individual user assignments.
- Attribute-based access control (ABAC): Beyond just roles, ABAC defines fine-grained access rules based on attributes like department, clearance level, time of day, IP address, etc.
- Object and file permissions: Access can be allowed or denied at the object/file level to control read, write, edit, delete, and other capabilities.
- Network segmentation: Data lakes can be segmented into zones isolated by network controls, with tiered access between zones. This creates security boundaries between sensitive data sets.
Compliance, Auditing, and Monitoring
To ensure the access policy is followed and effective, auditing and compliance tools should include:
- Access logs: Systems should log all data access attempts – both authorized and failed ones – for review and anomaly detection.
- Permission auditing: Regular permission reviews validate that access aligns with the policy and business needs. Any unnecessary entitlements are removed.
- Policy violation alerts: Automated alerts notify administrators of suspected policy violations like suspicious failed logins or abnormal data activities.
- DLP tools: Data loss prevention tools detect potential exfiltration and abnormalities like sudden data egress.
- Compliance reporting: Most data privacy regulations require reporting to demonstrate compliance with required access controls and data handling.
Do You Need Any Tools to Create a Data Lake Access Policy?
While an access policy can be created manually, they require tools to execute.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions
IAM solutions centralize identity management, authentication, authorization, and reporting for data lake environments. These systems enforce access policies across hybrid and multi-cloud data lakes for human and machine identities. They provide a single platform for managing principals and their entitlements.
Data Catalogs
Data catalogs that document data sets, business definitions, ownership, classification, and other metadata are invaluable for informing policy creation. By integrating with data governance tools, catalogs provide the context needed to map data access to roles and responsibilities. Catalogs also enable policy simulation to preview the impact of policy changes.
Data Governance Tools
Solutions for data governance visualize data flows, usage trends, and dependencies. This empowers data stewards to codify need-to-know access aligned with organizational data governance strategy. Tying data lake policy to the broader governance program ensures appropriate access.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs)
For cloud-based data lakes, CASBs extend identity and access controls into the cloud. CASBs integrate with IAM systems to enforce unified policies across on-prem and cloud environments. Their APIs monitor and control access to cloud data to prevent shadow IT and data breaches.
Conclusion
A data lake access policy synthesizes identity management, access controls, auditing, and tooling into a unified framework. Well-constructed policies limit insider threat risks while providing data access that aligns with business goals. With robust access policies governing all human and application data interactions, enterprises can unlock transformational analytics from their data lake confidently.
Satori’s Data Security Platform can simplify and automate the implementation and enforcement of your data lake access policy. The data platform enables fine-grained access control and self-service access for data lakes to secure data assets at all classification levels.
To learn more about Satori’s Data Security Platform book a consulting call with one of our experts.
