Customer-configured Snowflake Integration (Legacy)

Overview

In this configuration, Panther has no access and requires a Database Administrator to run commands on our behalf.

This guide assumes you already have a Snowflake instance in AWS.

Ideally, your Panther deployment and Snowflake instance are in the same AWS region. Having both Panther and Snowflake in the same region lowers latency for queries and data movement (relative to cross region communications).

Panther uses two Snowflake users/roles to access your Snowflake instance:

  1. A read only user/role for queries

  2. An admin user/role with strict permissions only to the Panther databases to create tables when new log sources are onboarded into Panther.

In Snowflake, it is possible to share table access. This allows your business data and security data to be queried in Panther (via the PANTHER_READ_ONLY role).

When you manage your own Snowflake instance, you can create tables and views with data ingested by Panther. Do not place these custom objects inside Panther databases. Unexpected tables and views will cause errors. Instead, create them in non-Panther databases, and share them with Panther.

How to configure the legacy customer-managed Snowflake integration

1. Gather configuration information from Panther

  1. Log in to the Panther Console.

  2. Click the gear icon in the upper right.

  3. In the dropdown menu, click General.

There you will find:

  • Snowflake ReadOnly Lambda Role ARN

  • Snowflake Admin Lambda Role ARN

  • Lookup Tables Lambda Role ARN

In the Panther Console, the General Settings page is open. The Snowflake Settings tab is selected. The screen shows a list of Snowflake configuration ARNs.

Keep these ARNs handy, we will use this later.

2. Gather configuration information from Snowflake

In order to configure Panther, you need to get the SNOWFLAKE_IAM_USER from Snowflake.

In a Snowflake SQL shell execute the below sql, replacing myaccountid with your AWS account ID and myaccountregion with the account's region:

You should see a response similar to:

In the above example, the SNOWFLAKE_IAM_USER is the AWS attribute arn:aws:iam::87654321XXXX:user/k7m2-s-v2st0722. Keep this handy, we will use this in a later step.

3. Create the Panther databases in Snowflake

Execute in Snowflake SQL shell:

4. Create a read only role and an administrative role in Snowflake

NOTE: be sure to update <your warehouse> in the first line of the SQL block below to the desired Snowflake warehouse name that you wish Panther to use.

We recommend you create a dedicated Panther warehouse (e.g., PANTHER_WH), so that you can easily track costs and resize capacity independently of other Snowflake resources.

Execute in Snowflake SQL shell:

5. Create a read only user and an administrative user in Snowflake

NOTE: set <your_readonly_password> and <your_admin_password> below. Execute in Snowflake SQL shell:

6. Create a stored procedure to make creating AWS Secrets easier (Optional)

Define this stored procedure that will create a JSON document you can use to copy and paste into AWS Secret Manger (saving typing). Execute in Snowflake SQL shell:

7. Create a KMS key in your AWS account for Panther Snowflake Secrets

You will use this key to encrypt the Snowflake secrets that we will store in your AWS account as part of Step 8.

  1. Log in to your AWS account

  2. (Optional) Go to the same region that your Snowflake account is in

  3. Go to KMS service

  4. Click on Create a key

  5. Pick Symmetric for the type and click Next

  6. Set the alias to panther-secret. Click Next. On the next page Click Next (accept defaults)

  7. Click on Add another AWS Account and enter the account id where Panther is installed.

  8. Click Next and then click Finish.

8. Create a read only user AWS Secret and an administrative user AWS Secret

You will use AWS Secrets Manager to store the Snowflake user password. It will be configured to only allow access from a single lambda function in the Panther account.

Repeat the process below, once for panther_readonly user and once for the panther_admin user.

  • Access the AWS Secrets Manager via the console and select Store a New Secret button on the page.

  • You will be presented with a page titled Store a new secret. Select Other type of secrets from the list of types. Specify the following key/value pairs:

Field
Description

account

The name of your Snowflake account. It can be found by executing SELECT CURRENT_ACCOUNT()

user

Snowflake user you created earlier, either panther_readonly or panther_admin

password

The Snowflake user password that you created earlier

host

This is usually <something>.snowflakecomputing.com from the URL used to log into your cluster. Remove https:// and any trailing / from the hostname.

port

Use 443 unless you have configured differently

warehouse

The name of your Snowflake active warehouse

You can enter the above by hand OR run the following command in a Snowflake SQL shell, typing in the appropriate values for the 4 specified parameters (account and port should autopopulate). Do this once for the panther_readonly user and once for the panther_admin:

You can then copy-paste the result into each of the 2 secrets "plaintext" editor tab.

The image shows the "Store a new secret" screen from the AWS console. The option "Other type of secrets" is selected. The dropdown for "Select the encryption key" is set to "panther-secret."

NOTE: Check to make sure that all 6 fields (account, host, password, port, user, warehouse) are filled out and have the correct values, otherwise the Panther lambdas may encounter issues connecting to snowflake.

  • Under "Select the encryption key," select panther-secret from the dropdown.

  • Fill in the Secret key/values.

  • Click Next.

On the "Store a new secret" page in AWS, the secret type "Other types of secrets" is selected. Under "Specify the key/value pairs to be stored in this secret," the following keys are entered: account, host, password, port, user, and warehouse.
  • You will be presented with a screen asking for the name and description of the secret. Fill these in and click Next.

On the "Store a new secret" page in AWS, the secret name and description fields are filled out.
  • Configure how often you want AWS Secrets Manager to rotate your secret, then click Next.

The image shows the AWS Console during the process of storing a new secret. Under "Configure automatic rotation," the options available are "Disable automatic rotation" and "Enable automatic rotation."
  • Finally, you will be presented with an overview screen. Scroll to the bottom and click the Store button.

Update Permissions for the Secrets

We need to configure the permissions for the two Panther AWS secrets such that only the specific Panther lambdas have access to the Snowflake secret.

The Panther panther-snowflake-api will use the panther_readonly user for user queries while the panther-snowflake-admin-api will use the panther_admin user to create tables when new log sources are onboarded.

The panther-lookup-tables-api will use the the permissions to manage look up tables in Snowflake.

Go to the console and select each of the secrets you created above. On the overview screen click on the Edit Permissions button. Copy the below policy JSON, substituting the appropriate <snowflake lambda role>, either:

  • panther-snowflake-api role collected in the first step

  • panther-snowflake-admin-api role collected in the first step

Substitute <lookup tables lambda role> with the panther-lookup-tables-api role collected in the first step.

For the value of <secret ARN> use the ARN of the secret you are updating.

Then click Save.

Make a note of the arn for the secret. We will use this later.

9. Deploy Panther with Snowflake enabled

SaaS Customer-managed Deployment Users

Send to your Panther point of contact (POC):

  • SNOWFLAKE_IAM_USER collected in the first step

  • ARN for the panther_readonly user AWS Secret

  • ARN for the panther_admin user AWS Secret

Your Panther POC will re-deploy Panther with these settings to enable Snowflake.

CloudPrem Users

Customers running Panther in their own accounts (we call that CloudPrem) need to first deploy the master template doing an initial setup of Panther. After deploying the master template configure the master stack parameters as below:

  • update: SnowflakeAPISecretARN parameter as the ARN of the secret created above for the panther_readonly user.

  • update: SnowflakeAdminAPISecretARN parameter as the ARN of the secret created above for the panther_admin user.

  • update: SnowflakeDestinationClusterARNs parameter as the value of <SNOWFLAKE_IAM_USER> from initial step above.

Execute an update to the Cloudformation stack.

Validation of Snowpipe Processing

Once Panther is configured for Snowflake, you should have seven databases:

  • panther_logs

  • panther_rule_matches

  • panther_rule_errors

  • panther_cloudsecurity

  • panther_views

  • pather_stored_procedures

  • panther_monitor

Assuming you have data being regularly being processed, there should be data in the tables in a few minutes. This depends on your rate of log ingestion.

You can quickly test if the data ingestion is working by running a simple query:

The configuration can be tested from the Data Explorer. Run some same queries over a table that you know has data (check via Snowflake console).

Rotating Secrets

To rotate secrets, create a NEW user and edit the secret replacing the old user and password with the new user and password. Wait one hour before deleting/disabling the old user in Snowflake.

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