Data Team Data Management Page

The Data Management Page covers the content around managing, securing, and governing the Enterprise Data Platform and related activities.

Purpose

Data Management covers practices and policies around managing, securing, and governing the Enterprise Data Platform and activities related to it. The technical components of the Enterprise Data Platform are listed in the GitLab Tech Stack.

Scope

Data Security Practices

The Enterprise Data Platform captures, processes, and stores data collected from many systems. Not all of this data is of the same importance and we use the Critical System Tier framework and Data Classification Standard to help us determine what data is most important and how to best secure it.

Roles & Responsibilities

Role Responsibility
GitLab Team Members Responsible for following the requirements in this procedure
Data Management Team Responsible for implementing and executing this procedure
Data Management (Code Owners) Responsible for approving significant changes and exceptions to this procedure

Standard

Snowflake

We deploy a Role-Based Data Access Scheme in Snowflake:

Additional controls include:

Data Categorization

In the Data Platform at GitLab we have multiple categories. Its good to highlight that each category applies to all the data. This means that every Data Product (extracted source, table, row, field, dashboard, pump, etc..) is applicable to each of the data categories.

Data category Description Possible values How to handle Access controls
Data Classification The type and level of data. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green. Red data is not allowed to be stored in the Data Platform. Follow the general data security controls. No particular controls in place.
MNPI This is material non public information. MNPI or not MNPI. Follow the SAFE Data guide. Access is granted by Permifrost. GitLab Team Members will become a designated insider. Manager and VP approval needed via an AR.
Sensitive data Data that is considered to be kept sensitive and not be shared with all GitLab Team members by default. Sensitive or not Sensitive. Sensitive data is masked via DBT Access is granted by Permifrost. Manager approval needed via an AR.

General Data Security Controls

  • For the purpose of defining Data Controls, the Enterprise Data Platform is a Tier 1 system.
  • IMPORTANT: Customer Private RED data is prohibited from permanent storage in the Enterprise Data Platform.
Control RED ORANGE YELLOW
General Data Controls
Data Registry Listing Required Required Recommended
Encryption At Rest Required Required Required
Encryption In Transit Required Required Required
Privacy Review Required Recommended Not Required
Data Retention Procedures Required Recommended Not Required
Data Infrastructure Controls
Multi-Factor Authentication Required Required Required
Role Based Access Required Required Required
Access Logging Required Required Recommended
Data Warehouse Controls
Quarterly Snowflake User Audits Required Required Required
Quarterly SiSense User Audits Required Required Required
Quarterly Change Management Review Required Recommended Not Required
Quarterly RED Data Scanner Required N/A N/A
Endpoint Devices
Anti-Malware Required Required Required
Full-Disk Encryption Required Required Required
Quarterly Data Purge Required Required Required
  • Data Infrastructure: includes any systems with interact access or process data as part of a Data Warehouse and makes data available to end users.
  • Data Warehouse Controls: The Enterprise Data Warehouse is a Tier 1 System.
  • Endpoint Devices: All Endpoints Which Have Access To The Data Warehouse are Classified as Tier 1

Quarterly Data Health and Security Audit

A Quarterly Audit is performed to validate system security, such as ensuring the right people have correct data access configuration and data pipelines are running correctly.

The process is supported by the Quarterly Data Health and Security issue template. The label ~"Quarterly Data Health and Security Audit" is used for all issues and merge requests related to the Quarterly audit.

Here is a sample checklist of activities:

Snowflake

  • Deactivate off-boarded employees from Snowflake
    • All Snowflake accounts from GitLab team members that are off-boarded, should be deactivated from the day they are off-boarded. This activity checks for any active accounts for off-boarded GitLab team members. Subsequently any active account will be deactivated.
  • Deactivate any account, that has not logged-in within the past 60 days from the moment of performing an audit, from Snowflake.
    • Any named user Snowflake account that hasn’t logged for more than 60 days will be deactivated. After deactivation, the user will be informed. If a GitLab team member wants to have access provisioned back again, a regular AR needs to be created. After manager approval the account will be activated.
    • Validate all user accounts do not have password set.
  • Drop orphaned tables
    • Tables managed through dbt should be manually dropped when they are no longer needed or managed by dbt. This activity compared tables to the tables managed by dbt for tables that have been orphaned. Identified orphaned tables are validated as not being in use and then dropped.
  • Drop unused models
    • Models (tables and views) which are not being used will be dropped and the code which generates them will be removed from the Analytics repository. An unused model can be defined as:
      • It has not been queried in more than three months. OR
      • The Airflow account is the only user and no downstream models depend on it.
    • A review of tables flagged for removal will be done by the analytics community before being dropped. This will allow for any tables wrongly flagged to be kept.

Trusted Data

  • Review Data Siren to confirm known existence of RED data.
  • Generate a report of Business logic changes to the TD: Sales Funnel dashboard in the quarter. Business logic such as adding new dimensions, new facts, new marts, changing joins, adding new calculated fields.

Airflow

  • Remove log files older than 90 days.
    • Following this runbook remove old Airflow logfiles to reduce PVC. If we run out of disk space Airflow stops working.

Monte Carlo

  • Deactivate off-boarded employees from Monte Carlo
    • All Monte Carlo accounts from GitLab team members that are off-boarded, should be deactivated from the day they are off-boarded. This activity checks for any active accounts for off-boarded GitLab team members. Subsequently any active account will be deactivated.
  • Deactivate any account, that has not logged-in within the past 90 days from the moment of performing an audit, from Monte Carlo.
    • Any named user Monte Carlo account that hasn’t logged for more than 90 days will be deactivated. If a GitLab team member wants to have access provisioned back again, a regular AR needs to be created. After manager approval the account will be activated if there there are licenses available

Note: The 90 days are subject to change. At this moment we have set a 90 days threshold because Monte Carlo is less frequently used by some team members (not needed as frequent as i.e. Snowflake or Tableau). We may change this in the future

Exceptions

Exceptions to this procedure will be tracked as per the Information Security Policy Exception Management Process.

References

Last modified April 4, 2024: Remove Sisense from Data Management (6d4fe84a)
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