ALTR Rolls Out Snowflake Native Format-Preserving Data Protection Using Snowpark

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Published on Jun 27, 2023
Data governance innovator, ALTR, announces a module to encrypt and decrypt data natively within the Snowflake Data Cloud, cutting data security costs and accelerating query times up to 1000x for ALTR customers.
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Las Vegas, NV (June 27, 2023)ALTR, innovator of automated data governance and data security solutions, today announced at Snowflake’s annual user conference, Snowflake Summit 2023, the expansion of its SaaS data access control and tokenization solution with Snowflake, the Data Cloud company. The solution has an industry-first, format-preserving data protection module running natively on Snowpark, Snowflake’s development framework, providing better security, up to 1000x faster results on queries that need detokenization, cost efficiencies, and additional use cases for data sharing through easy tokenization of sensitive data.

ALTR’s new format-preserving data protection module allows sensitive data to be encrypted and decrypted by ALTR’s SaaS-based platform in Snowflake. This takes the place of on-premises appliances that can cost millions of dollars per license and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month for calls between Snowflake and the on-premises systems, while adding significant lag to each query. ALTR’s solution allows queries to avoid those calls for a faster response time while also ensuring at-rest data is secure because it stays entirely within Snowflake. Snowpark enables ALTR’s solution by delivering an execution environment to facilitate data encryption and decryption through support for fully functional applications.

“ALTR’s format-preserving encryption delivers powerful yet simple data protection to customers by securing data directly in Snowflake,” said Snowflake Security Field CTO and ALTR board member Jonathan Sander. “It is also another demonstration of Snowpark’s value. Snowpark is enabling partners to deliver innovative solutions that make Snowflake easier to use for customers with critical workloads, like data science projects that must include the most sensitive, regulated data but also maintain high levels of data security.”

ALTR’s new module integrates seamlessly with the company’s existing data access control and security solution delivered natively in Snowflake as a highly available service.

“Format-preserving data protection functionality on its own is only part of the answer,” said James Beecham, Founder and CEO, ALTR. “ALTR has already made essential data access control and security features easy to implement and manage via our SaaS platform, no-code interface, range of integration options, automated policy enforcement, patented data security functions, and connections with data catalog and ETL leaders. Adding this capability to our solution through Snowpark makes completely governing and protecting data at scale even more achievable for customers.”

Format-preserving data protection provides modernized investment protection that allows large organizations which rely on legacy applications, such as those in the financial services and healthcare industries, to leverage advanced data protections while maintaining data interoperability and avoid updating or replacing systems in which they have a sizable investment.

This announcement further illustrates ALTR’s commitment to helping shared customers get the most from their Snowflake investments.

“ALTR’s easy-to-use solution allows Virgin Pulse Data, Reporting, and Analytics teams to leverage Snowflake object tagging to automatically apply data masking to thousands of tagged columns across multiple Snowflake databases,” said Andrew Bartley, Director Data Governance and Management, Virgin Pulse. “We’re able to store PII/PHI data securely and privately with a complete audit trail. Our internal users gain insight from this masked data and change lives for good.”

“Since becoming a customer in 2021, Redwood has relied on ALTR’s tokenization to secure sensitive payroll data in Snowflake so that it can be leveraged to deliver insights on financial allocation and margin contributions,” said Cole Kardys, VP of Data and Analytics, Redwood Logistics. “We’ve been able to scale our tokenization utilization 1000% easily with ALTR as our Snowflake usage has increased, allowing us to add more sensitive data, expand to additional users, and extract even more value from Snowflake.”

This announcement tops off ALTR’s year of Snowflake momentum driven by the company’s industry-first free offering. Over the past year, ALTR has released features for Snowflake including vaulted tokenization, row access policies, Snowflake data classification reporting, function extensions for custom masking, and packaging updates as well as open-source integrations for utilizing ALTR directly from data catalogs and ETLs with Snowflake.

From 2021 to 2022, ALTR has also recorded a 350% increase in Snowflake partner connect activations. To date in 2023, ALTR’s Snowflake-based ARR has increased 485%, database connections have increased 36% and active policies by 44%. More than 240 customers in industry verticals including financial services, healthcare, retail/CPG, advertising and technology, industrial and logistics, and SLED and consulting rely on ALTR to help govern and secure their sensitive data.

Meet with ALTR at Snowflake Summit 2023 June 26 - 29, Booth #2242, to see a demo of ALTR’s format-preserving data protection module or request a virtual demo here: https://get.altr.com/request-a-demo/.

About ALTR

ALTR is the only automated data access control and security solution that allows organizations to easily govern and protect sensitive data wherever it lives – to get more data to more users more securely in less time. Hundreds of companies and thousands of users leverage ALTR’s SaaS platform to gain unparalleled visibility into data usage, automate data access controls and policy enforcement, and secure data with patented rate-limiting, real-time alerting, and tokenization-as-a-service, all in minutes instead of months. ALTR’s data ecosystem integrations with leading databases, data catalogs, ETL/ELTs and more enable a single scalable solution for enterprise-wide data governance and security.

To learn more, please visit ALTR.com. To start with the ALTR Free plan today, sign up here.

See Format Preserving Encryption in action: 

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