Elementary Cloud
Security and Privacy

Security principals

Elementary Cloud is designed with the core principle of least privilege. Our cloud service does not require permissions to access the customer data. Therefor, we instruct our customers to create a dedicated role for Elementary with read only access only to the Elementary schema in your data warehouse.

As long as you follow the onboarding process instructions, it will be impossible for Elementary Cloud to read data from your warehouse that does not reside in the Elementary schema. This ensures that Elementary cloud will not mistakenly access your data, and minimizes the risk in case of a data breach. Our product and architecture are always evolving, but our commitment to secure design always remains.

How it works

  1. You install the Elementary dbt package in your dbt project and configure it to write to it’s own schema, the Elementary schema.
  2. The package writes test results, run results, logs and metadata to the Elementary schema.
  3. The cloud service only requires read access to the Elementary schema, not to schemas where your sensitive data is stored.
  4. The cloud service connects to sync the Elementary schema using an encrypted connection and a static IP address that you will need to add to your allowlist.
Elementary cloud security

What is stored in the Elementary schema?

The Elementary schema stores only metadata, aggregated metrics and logs. You can find the details of the tables here.

The only exception to that is the test_results_samples which can be disabled. This is a feature that shows a sample of a few raw failed rows for failed tests, to help them triage and understand the problem. To avoid this sampling, set the var test_sample_rows_count: 0 in your dbt_project.yml (default is 5 sample rows).

Secrets and data protection

  • Tokens and credentials - For customer secrets (tokens and credentials) we use AWS Secrets Manager. Secrets Manager uses envelope encryption with AWS KMS keys and data keys to protect each secret value. Whenever the secret value in a secret changes, Secrets Manager generates a new data key to protect it. The data key is encrypted under a KMS key and stored in the metadata of the secret. See this link for more details.
  • Customer data (Elementary schema replica) - The synced customer data is encrypted at rest using server-side encryption (AES-256).

Compliance

Contact us for auditing reports and penetration testing results.

Have more questions?

We would be happy to answer! Reach out to us on email or Slack.