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Attribute-Based Access Control
2 posts about Attribute-Based Access Control. Every summary links to the original.
Introducing Cross-Engine ABAC
Cross-engine ABAC is announced in Beta, extending Unity Catalog's fine-grained governance to external engines through Iceberg REST Catalog APIs. It supports tag-based row filters and column masks, including conditional logic and SQL UDFs, while allowing policies to be defined once and enforced across engines. For an external query, the engine sends a scan request, Unity Catalog evaluates entitlements and applicable policies, and returns a filtered scan plan before the engine processes authorized files. Enforcement remains at the catalog layer, so engines need not implement governance logic and can use the open scan APIs. Apache Spark is supported today through Iceberg-Spark and Delta-Spark connectors, with Starburst and DuckDB integrations coming soon; the Beta also points toward Apache Iceberg label exchange for future governance metadata sharing.
Alex Jiang, Alex Reid, Michelle LeonABAC row filtering and column masking policies, governed tags, and data classification are now generally available in Unity Catalog
Unity Catalog now generally offers three complementary data-governance capabilities: Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) policies for row filtering and column masking, Governed Tags, and agentic Data Classification. They address per-object access rules, coordination gaps, and manual detection by letting governance teams define tag-based policies once, automatically classify sensitive data, and protect matching objects across catalogs and schemas. Governed tags provide an account-level vocabulary inherited across catalogs, schemas, tables, and columns, while ABAC applies row filters and column masks using tag-based conditions. Classification uses built-in compliance classifiers, custom classifiers, metadata, pattern recognition, and large language models, with human-in-the-loop validation and false-positive exclusions. General availability adds 10x larger policy limits, support for 10,000+ policies per metastore, lifecycle management through SQL, APIs, UI, and Terraform, expanded compliance coverage, and custom classifiers in beta.
Adriana Ispas, Kristen Wilder, Jacqueline Li, Corey Sunwold, Menglei Sun, Viswesh Periyasamy
