Case Study: The Center for New Data achieves 30x faster, secure access to sensitive data with Immuta

How The Center for New Data Revolutionized Research on Sensitive Data with Immuta

The Center for New Data is a nonprofit that accelerates ethical, public-interest research using sensitive commercial, donated, and public datasets. Facing the risk of re-identification and the operational burden of provisioning many researchers across a Snowflake data lake, the Center partnered with Immuta to add a data access governance layer (including Immuta’s active data catalog, self-service workflows, ABAC and PETs) to balance privacy and utility while simplifying access for a diverse, changing contributor base.

Immuta implemented self-service data discovery and workflows plus automated enforcement of fine‑grained attribute‑based access controls and privacy‑enhancing technologies on Snowflake, letting non-technical governance staff author policies in an intuitive UI. As a result, The Center for New Data saved over $1 million annually in data engineering costs, cut time-to-data 30x (from 90 days to 3 days), moved from hundreds of RBAC grants to fewer than 10 ABAC policies, and streamlined secure collaboration—while positioning the organization to govern Databricks and BigQuery from day one.

The Center for New Data

Ryan Naughton

Founder & CTO