Snowflake PCI Data Exposure Remediation

Why It Matters

When PCI data exposure is detected in your Snowflake environment, immediate remediation is critical to prevent financial penalties and maintain payment processing privileges. This guide provides systematic approaches to secure exposed cardholder data, implement proper access controls, and establish ongoing protection mechanisms that meet PCI-DSS requirements.

Primary Risk: Data exposure of payment card information

Relevant Regulation: PCI-DSS Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Swift remediation minimizes compliance violations and protects your organization from potential data breaches that could result in substantial fines and reputational damage.

Prerequisites

Permissions & Roles

ACCOUNTADMIN or SECURITYADMIN role
OWNERSHIP privileges on affected databases/schemas
Ability to create masking policies and row access policies

External Tools

Snowflake Web UI or SnowSQL CLI
Cyera DSPM platform
Incident response documentation

Prior Setup

Snowflake account with proper governance
Exposed PCI data already identified
Security team notification protocols
Backup and recovery procedures

Introducing Cyera

Cyera is a modern Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform that discovers, classifies, and continuously monitors your sensitive data across cloud services. Using advanced AI and Named Entity Recognition (NER) models, Cyera automatically identifies PCI data patterns in Snowflake, tracks data lineage, and provides real-time remediation guidance to ensure swift compliance with PCI-DSS requirements.

Step-by-Step Guide

Assess exposure scope and impact

Review the Cyera findings to understand which tables, views, and shares contain exposed PCI data. Document the scope including data volume, access patterns, and downstream dependencies.

SHOW GRANTS ON TABLE sensitive_schema.cardholder_data;

Implement immediate access restrictions

Revoke unnecessary access permissions and restrict table access to authorized personnel only. Create emergency access controls while preparing permanent solutions.

REVOKE SELECT ON TABLE sensitive_schema.cardholder_data FROM PUBLIC;

Deploy dynamic data masking policies

Create and apply masking policies to protect PCI data in-place. Configure role-based masking that reveals data only to authorized users while maintaining functionality for others.

CREATE MASKING POLICY pci_mask AS (val string) RETURNS string ->
CASE
WHEN CURRENT_ROLE() IN ('PCI_ADMIN', 'COMPLIANCE_OFFICER') THEN val
ELSE '**** **** **** ' || RIGHT(val, 4)
END;

Enable comprehensive monitoring and alerting

Configure Cyera's continuous monitoring to track access patterns, detect policy violations, and alert on suspicious activities. Set up automated compliance reporting for ongoing PCI-DSS adherence.

Architecture & Workflow

Snowflake Security Layer

Masking policies, access controls, and encryption

Cyera Monitoring

Continuous scanning and compliance validation

Access Management

Role-based permissions and audit trails

Incident Response

Automated alerts and remediation workflows

Remediation Flow Summary

Detect Exposure → Restrict Access → Apply Masking → Monitor & Alert

Best Practices & Tips

Performance Considerations

Test masking policies on non-production first
Monitor query performance after applying policies
Use column-level security for granular control

Security Best Practices

Implement principle of least privilege
Regular access reviews and certifications
Encrypt data at rest and in transit

Common Pitfalls

Forgetting to check data shares and clones
Overlooking historical query results in cache
Not updating downstream applications expecting unmasked data

References & Further Reading

Next Steps

🛡️ Prevent: Set up proactive PCI data protection 🔍 Detect: Implement ongoing PCI data discovery