POST_START

Restricting Finance Data Access to an Approved Production Group

I was recently asked to help secure access to sensitive finance data in our Databricks environment. The goal was to ensure that only a specific group of finance analysts could access certain data in the production catalog, while maintaining strict access controls to prevent unauthorized access. I decided to use Databricks Unity Catalog to enforce these access restrictions.

Granting Use of the Production Catalog

First, I needed to grant the finance-approved group the ability to use the production catalog. This is a foundational step because without access to the catalog, they wouldn’t be able to see or interact with any of the schemas or tables within it.

GRANT USE CATALOG ON CATALOG production TO `finance-approved`;

I saw a representative result like this:

result
Grant applied successfully; the principal now has the requested privilege.

I verified that this step successfully applied the privilege and that the finance-approved group now had access to the production catalog. This was the first step in making sure they could navigate to the correct data.

Granting Access to the Finance Schema

Next, I needed to grant the finance-approved group access to the finance schema within the production catalog. This ensured they could see the specific tables related to financial data, such as payments, invoices, and expenses.

GRANT USE SCHEMA ON SCHEMA production.finance TO `finance-approved`;

I saw a representative result like this:

result
Grant applied successfully; the principal now has the requested privilege.

I noticed that this step allowed the group to access the finance schema, which is essential for them to interact with the tables inside it. It was a critical step to ensure that they could explore and query the data they needed.

Granting Select Access to the Payments Table

Finally, I needed to grant the finance-approved group the ability to select data from the payments table. This was the most granular level of access required, as the finance team needed to analyze payment data but should not be able to modify it.

GRANT SELECT ON TABLE production.finance.payments TO `finance-approved`;

I saw a representative result like this:

result
Grant applied successfully; the principal now has the requested.

I verified that this step successfully granted the SELECT privilege on the payments table. This ensured that the finance-approved group could now query the data they needed without having the ability to alter it, maintaining data integrity and security.

Conclusion

By following these steps, I successfully restricted access to finance data in the production catalog to the approved group. Each step built on the previous one, ensuring that access was granted at the appropriate level and that security was maintained. This approach helped align with our organization’s data governance policies and provided a clear, controlled way to manage access to sensitive financial information.