Data Security in Apache Iceberg: An Enterprise-Ready Framework for Granular Protection

Abstract

In today’s data-driven world, sensitive information flows across diverse environments—cloud, on-premises, and hybrid architectures. Traditional perimeter-based security is no longer sufficient. This session introduces Protegrity’s vision for data-centric security within the Apache Iceberg ecosystem, ensuring that protection travels with the data itself.

Key Themes

1. Security Beyond Location
   • Data protection should not depend on where data resides. Whether in Snowflake, Parquet, or Iceberg tables, sensitive data must remain secure throughout its lifecycle.
2. Embedded Protection
   • Encryption at the data item level (e.g., each credit card number encrypted individually).
   • Policies and permissions enforced at the role level—only explicitly authorized roles can decrypt.
3. Enable AI-Driven Analytics Securely
   • Demonstrate how encrypted data can still be leveraged for analytics and machine learning without compromising privacy.
   • Showcase planned deployment using text-to-analytics workflows.
4. Integration with Apache Iceberg
   • Discuss how Protegrity’s approach complements Iceberg’s architecture for secure, scalable, flexible data storage.
   • Highlight interoperability with Parquet Modular Encryption (PME) and future enhancements.

What You’ll Learn

• Why Iceberg needs enterprise-grade, granular security—and what “pervasive protection” means in distributed data environments.
• A reference architecture for protecting Parquet-backed Iceberg tables using PME + external policy enforcement.
• Performance and operational benefits of chunk-level protection (including bulk processing and reduced overhead).