Databricks Customer Data Protection

Learn how to prevent exposure of customer data in Databricks environments. Follow step-by-step guidance for GDPR compliance.

data exposure

GDPR

databricks

Why It Matters

The core goal is to proactively prevent customer data from being exposed in your Databricks environment through proper access controls, data governance, and continuous monitoring. Preventing customer data exposure in Databricks is critical for organizations subject to GDPR, as it helps you maintain customer trust and avoid significant regulatory penalties while ensuring data minimization and purpose limitation principles are enforced.

Primary Risk: Data exposure of customer information

Relevant Regulation: GDPR General Data Protection Regulation

A comprehensive prevention strategy delivers proactive security, establishing robust controls that prevent unauthorized access and accidental exposure before incidents occur.

Prerequisites

Permissions & Roles

  • Databricks admin or service principal
  • catalogs/read, schemas/read, tables/read privileges
  • Unity Catalog admin privileges

External Tools

  • Databricks CLI
  • Cyera DSPM account
  • API credentials

Prior Setup

  • Databricks workspace provisioned
  • Unity Catalog enabled
  • CLI authenticated
  • Data governance policies defined

Introducing Cyera

Cyera is a modern Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform that discovers, classifies, and continuously monitors your sensitive data across cloud services. By leveraging advanced AI and Named Entity Recognition (NER) models, Cyera automatically identifies customer data patterns in Databricks, establishes intelligent access controls, and provides real-time policy enforcement to prevent exposure before it occurs, ensuring GDPR compliance through automated data governance.

Step-by-Step Guide

1
Configure Unity Catalog governance

Enable Unity Catalog and establish metastore-level governance policies. Create secure catalogs with proper access controls and implement row-level security for customer data tables.

databricks unity-catalog create-catalog --name customer_data_secure

2
Deploy Cyera data protection policies

In the Cyera portal, navigate to Policies → Data Protection → Create new. Configure automated rules to prevent customer data from being accessed by unauthorized users and set up real-time monitoring for policy violations.

3
Implement access controls and masking

Configure dynamic view functions for data masking, establish attribute-based access controls (ABAC), and create data sharing agreements with appropriate anonymization rules for customer information.

4
Enable continuous monitoring and alerting

Set up automated alerts for unauthorized access attempts, configure audit logging for all customer data interactions, and establish incident response workflows for potential exposure events.

Architecture & Workflow

Databricks Unity Catalog

Centralized governance and access control layer

Cyera Policy Engine

AI-powered data protection and access enforcement

Access Controls

RBAC, ABAC, and dynamic data masking

Monitoring & Alerting

Real-time violation detection and response

Data Protection Flow

Data Classification → Policy Application → Access Control → Continuous Monitoring

Best Practices & Tips

Data Governance

  • Implement least privilege access principles
  • Use dynamic views for sensitive data masking
  • Establish clear data retention policies

Access Management

  • Regular access reviews and certifications
  • Implement just-in-time access for sensitive data
  • Use service principals for automated processes

Common Pitfalls

  • Over-privileged service accounts
  • Inadequate data classification tagging
  • Missing audit trails for data access

References & Further Reading

Next Steps

🔍 Detect: Identify existing customer data exposures 🔧 Fix: Remediate discovered customer data exposures