Implement Security and Access Control in Unity Catalog

Intermediate
Data Engineer
Administrator
Azure Databricks

You explore different features and tools to help you implement security and access control in Unity Catalog.

Learning objectives

At the end of this module, you're able to:

  • Describe the Unity Catalog query lifecycle and where access checks occur.
  • Distinguish explicit grants from inherited privileges and state when each is appropriate.
  • Identify the minimum privileges required for common tasks (querying, creating tables).
  • Compare Unity Catalog authorization to a legacy Hive metastore approach.
  • Apply a repeatable pattern for granting and auditing access.

Prerequisites

  • Basic understanding of data lakehouse concepts (catalogs, schemas, tables, views).
  • Familiarity with Azure Databricks workspace navigation (clusters, SQL warehouses, notebooks).
  • Introductory knowledge of SQL (running queries, creating tables, granting permissions).