AI further heightens this problem. Users can access data in more ways than before, through Genie, agents, APIs and more. Protection has to keep pace with the demand for data, or access controls end up limiting the empowerment that technology has created.

The answer cannot be manual configuration per table. It has to be a system where governance teams define the rules once, and protection follows the data automatically across the entire data estate as it is created and classified. That way, users and agents can be granted broad access to the platform without being granted broad access to sensitive data.

Today, we are excited to announce the General Availability of three complementary capabilities in Unity Catalog that make this possible: Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) policies for row filtering and column masking, Governed Tags, and automated Data Classification.

Access rules need to apply dynamically based on attributes, sensitive data needs to be detected as it appears, and responsibilities need to spread across specialized roles so no single person is a bottleneck. Unity Catalog brings this together through three complementary capabilities, paired with a permission model that enables separation of duties: attribute-based access control (ABAC) policies, governed tags, and agentic data classification.