Old version
July 11, 2026 13:45 UTC
0eb2a219a956e72f7703bf9fca8351c1290d0540d29bbf71e6dae3ff2897a2e6
CA-V-004753
New version
August 28, 2026 00:55 UTC
80bb086d35becead8fd53050ce37a7d10d7ae0b3a6b56a42b8b92e21f71580c3
CA-V-006173
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Change Summary
Databricks expanded its Databricks Security Practices document in an update detected on August 28, 2026, adding extensive detail about its bug bounty program, customer penetration testing policies, cloud console access controls, production system access procedures, and secure software development lifecycle practices. The prior version contained minimal language about these areas; the updated version now explicitly describes how Databricks operates its HackerOne bug bounty program (over 200 reports from 100+ researchers), defines permissible scope for customer penetration testing, details multifactor authentication and VPN requirements for employee production access, and outlines its SDLC practices including code review, security scanning, and release management procedures. This adds transparency about Databricks' internal security operations and customer testing options but does not materially alter customer obligations or data rights.
low severity
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24Close All Bug bounty Our public bug bounty program, facilitated by HackerOne, allows a global collective of cybersecurity researchers and penetration testers to test Databricks for security vulnerabilities.
25Some of the key decisions we’ve made to make the program successful include: Encouraging an engaged community of hackers to be active on our program by providing transparency to our HackerOne program statistics such as response rate and payouts Promptly responding to bug bounty submissions, with an average time-to-bounty under a week Performing variant analysis on every valid submission to identify alternative ways that an exploit may be used, and verifying 100% of fixes Adding bonuses that drive attention to the most important areas of the product We work hard to make our program successful and to learn from each submission.
26Our open and collaborative approach to our bug bounty program has resulted in over 100 security researchers being thanked for over 200 reports.
27Thank you all for helping us keep Databricks secure!
28Customer penetration and vulnerability testing We want our customers to have confidence in the workloads they run on Databricks.
29If your team would like to run a vulnerability scan or penetration test against Databricks, we encourage you to: Run vulnerability scans on data plane systems located inside of your cloud service provider account.
30Run tests against your code, provided that those tests are entirely contained within the data plane (or other systems) located in your cloud service provider account and are evaluating your controls.
31Join the Databricks Bug Bounty program to access a dedicated deployment of Databricks to perform penetration tests.
32Any penetration test against our multi-tenant control plane requires participation in the program.
30Secure software development lifecycle Databricks has a software development lifecycle (SDLC) that builds security into all design, development and production steps — from feature requests to production monitoring — supported by tooling designed to trace a feature through the lifecycle.39Close All Cloud console access We require multifactor authentication to access core infrastructure consoles such as the cloud service provider consoles (AWS, GCP and Azure).
40Databricks has policies and procedures to avoid the use of explicit credentials, such as passwords or API keys, wherever possible.
41For example, only appointed security team members can process exception requests for new AWS IAM principals or policies.
42Databricks access to production systems Databricks employees can access the production system under very specific circumstances (such as emergency break-fix).
43Access is governed by a Databricks-built system that validates access and performs policy checks.
44Access requires that employees are connected to our VPN, and authenticate using our single sign-on solution with multifactor authentication.
45Learn more Separation of duties Our internal security standards call for the separation of duties wherever possible.
46For example, we centralize our cloud identity provider’s authentication and authorization process to separate authorizing access (Mary should access a system) from granting access (Mary can now access a system).
47Least privilege We prioritize least privilege access, both in internal systems and for our access to production systems.
48Least privilege is explicitly built into our internal policies and reflected in our procedures.
49For example, most customers can control whether Databricks employees have access to their workspace, and we programmatically apply numerous checks before access can be granted and automatically revoke access after a limited time.
50Learn more Secure software development lifecycle Databricks has a software development lifecycle (SDLC) that builds security into all design, development and production steps — from feature requests to production monitoring — supported by tooling designed to trace a feature through the lifecycle.
32Security Policy and Communication Details Databricks follows RFC 9116, ISO/IEC 30111:2019(E), and ISO/IEC 29147:2018(E) standards for security vulnerability handling and communications.52Close All Design Databricks leverages an Ideas Portal that tracks feature requests and allows voting both for customers and employees.
53Our feature design process includes privacy and security by design.
54After an initial assessment, high-impact features are subject to a security design review from the product security team in association with the security champions from engineering, along with threat modeling and other security-specific checks.
55Development We use an agile development methodology that breaks up new features into multiple sprints.
56Databricks does not outsource the development of the Databricks platform, and all developers are required to go through secure software development training — including the OWASP Top 10 — when hired and annually thereafter.
57Production data and environments are separated from development, QA and staging environments.
58All code is checked into a source control system that requires single sign-on with multifactor authentication and granular permissions.
59Code merges require approval from the functional engineering owners of each area impacted, and all code is peer reviewed.
60The product security team manually reviews security-sensitive code to eliminate business logic errors.
61Security scanning We use best-of-breed tools to identify vulnerable packages or code.
62Automation in a preproduction environment runs authenticated host and container vulnerability scans of the operating system and installed packages, along with dynamic and static code analysis scans.
63Engineering tickets are created automatically for any vulnerabilities and assigned to relevant teams.
64The product security team also triages critical vulnerabilities to assess their severity in the Databricks architecture.
65Quality assurance We run quality checks (such as unit tests and end-to-end tests) at multiple stages of the SDLC process, including at code merge, after code merge, at release and in production.
66Our testing includes positive tests, regression tests and negative tests.
67Once deployed, we have extensive monitoring to identify faults, and users can get alerts about system availability via the Status Page .
68In the event of any P0 or P1 issue, Databricks automation triggers a “5 whys” root cause analysis methodology that selects a member of the postmortem team to oversee the review.
69Findings are communicated to executive leadership, and follow-up items are tracked.
70Release Management Databricks has a formal release management process that includes a formal go/no-go decision before releasing code.
71Changes go through testing designed to avoid regressions and validate that new functionality has been tested on realistic workloads.
72Additionally, there is a staged rollout with monitoring to identify issues early.
73To implement separation of duties, only our deployment management system can release changes to production, and multiperson approval is required for all deployments.
74Rollout We follow an immutable infrastructure model, where systems are replaced rather than patched to improve reliability and security and to avoid the risk of configuration drift.
75When new system images or application code is launched, we transfer workloads to new instances that launch with the new code.
76This is true both for the control plane and the data plane (see the Security Features section for more on the Databricks architecture ).
77Once code is in production, a verification process confirms that artifacts are not added, removed or changed without authorization.
78Documentation The final phase of the SDLC process is creating customer-facing documentation.
79Databricks docs are managed much like our source code, and documentation is stored within the same source control system.
80Significant changes require both technical and docs team review before they can be merged and published.
81Visit documentation Security Policy and Communication Details Databricks follows RFC 9116, ISO/IEC 30111:2019(E), and ISO/IEC 29147:2018(E) standards for security vulnerability handling and communications.
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