Column-level security that is also known as column-based access security provides its customers the authority  to control access to table columns that have been based on the user’s accomplished affairs or group membership. Now let’s see what it does and what are the actual functions of the column security functions that are provided by the snowflake column level security? It isn’t anything complex and resembles row-level security. It just allows the set access control to the people it is meant for within the database. The column-level security sets the type of data you have to give. For example, if there is an article you can do data updates or insertions. Another example is that in an organization when the admin can access the database at the same moment the other people like the accountant can only access the accounts and the HR can only access the HR department column.

The Two Types of Column-level Security

Implicit column-level security: When doing it in the implicit form, the users who have a query data, they do not have access to the data one will only see the empty columns.

Explicit column-level security: the user will only be able to query the columns they have excess to.

The major benefit of using implicitly snowflake column based access control is that if anyone who tries to access data will not be able to see any kind of data because it is empty or masked by the admin.

Column-Level Security Using Secure Views

We will first use Secure Views to create an abstract layer with conditions using the SELECT CASE command.

Now let’s put a view on how column-level security can be achieved. It can be done simply by following these 3 simple steps:

In certain databases the column-level security is securable but in Snowflake they are not securable and you can’t use GRANT or REVOKE commands on a column.

The easiest and the most used method of access control is by using View. It is an abstract layer. What happens is that the user uses the layer rather than using the actual database. The View contains a filtering gadget which results from the query.

Last but not the least, the third way of achieving the column-level security is by creating dynamic masking which sets the transparency of the database and allows the access to the data which is not masked.