Snowflake Horizon is a major leap forward in native data governance. As organizations scale their use of the Snowflake Data Cloud, Horizon brings together powerful discovery, classification, and compliance tools to help centralize control and increase trust in governed assets.

But Horizon is not the entire picture. In most data-driven companies, metadata doesn’t live in one platform. While Horizon provides critical first-party functionality, it leaves key gaps in data collaboration, cross-platform visibility, and AI-readiness.

But with the addition of Secoda, organizations can extend that foundation into a comprehensive, AI-ready governance platform that spans their entire stack, not just Snowflake.

In this post, we’ll break down what Horizon offers, how it compares to modern data governance platforms like Secoda, and why the two together are better than either alone.

What is Snowflake Horizon?

Snowflake Horizon Catalog is the governance layer of the Snowflake AI Data Cloud. It offers a built-in set of capabilities (compliance, security, privacy, discovery, and collaboration) to help organizations discover, understand, and govern their Snowflake data, apps, and models.

Governance with Horizon spans several key areas:

• Compliance: Monitor access, audit usage, tag sensitive assets, and track object-level dependencies across tables, views, and models.
• Security: Use built-in encryption, granular RBAC, and the Trust Center to evaluate and improve your data security posture.
• Privacy: Define advanced policies (e.g., aggregation, projection, differential privacy) and collaborate safely in secure clean rooms or with synthetic data.
• Discovery: Use natural language search, internal listings, and AI-generated descriptions to find and understand data products faster.
• Collaboration: Share curated listings internally or externally, publish to the Snowflake Marketplace, and take action on governed assets with minimal setup.

What Horizon starts, Secoda scales

Secoda connects directly to Horizon-governed assets and takes your governance maturity to the next level. While Snowflake Horizon centralizes policies and controls contained within the Snowflake Data Cloud, Secoda expands that foundation into a unified governance layer across your entire stack for a complete, holistic view.

If you're already using Snowflake, adding Secoda is a natural next step. Together, they create a powerful governance system that improves efficiency, enhances collaboration, and prepares your team for AI-first operations.

Secoda delivers an end-to-end operating model that brings metadata, data quality, access management, and collaboration into one seamless experience.

Here’s how:

A unified, searchable Catalog

Secoda ingests Snowflake Horizon metadata like tables, models, Iceberg assets, apps, then enriches it with metadata from the rest of your stack (dbt, orchestration, BI, and more). Everything lives in a single, AI-powered catalog with automated documentation and deep search, ensuring that metadata stays fresh and accessible across the entire business.

Business context, not just metadata

Secoda adds semantic layers to raw metadata: glossary terms, ownership, related resources, and frequently asked questions. This makes it easier for business users to understand governed assets, not just find them. No more toggling between five tools or guessing what a dataset means.

Bi-directional Tag sync

Tags stay consistent across systems. You can push tags from Secoda into Snowflake to inform access policies, or ingest tags from Horizon-governed Snowflake assets into Secoda to centralize context. This reinforces compliance across platforms without extra effort or manual upkeep.

Meet users where they work

Secoda’s suite of extensions empowers your team to stay in flow with no tab-switching required.

• Browser extension: Surface rich metadata directly within tools like Snowflake, Looker, Power BI, and more. Users can explore definitions, owners, lineage, and documentation without ever leaving the interface they’re already working in.
• Slack & Microsoft Teams: Let business users and stakeholders ask data questions right where collaboration happens. Secoda AI automatically answers in-thread and logs each question into the platform, building a living knowledge base and freeing up the data team from repeated inquiries.

Data steward workflows at scale

Bring structure and accountability to your entire stack, including Horizon-governed assets, with policies for certification, ownership assignment, SLAs, and approval flows for RBAC. These workflows help teams move faster without compromising compliance.

Automated classification & documentation

Auto-tag PII, PHI, and custom classifications using Secoda’s built-in, AI-driven workflows. Generate table- and column-level descriptions with a single click, eliminating hours of manual effort. Just ask the team at Miinto, who drastically cut down documentation time by leveraging these automations to scale knowledge across their stack.

End-to-end lineage you can trust

Go beyond Snowflake’s logs with automated lineage across your warehouse, transformation layers, and BI dashboards. One-click impact analysis lets users trace dependencies in seconds, reducing risk and enabling confident decision-making.

Data quality you can measure

Secoda’s Data Quality Score (DQS) brings observability into the governance equation. It tracks reliability, usability, accuracy, and stewardship at the resource level, providing real-time alerts, built-in monitors, and automated suggestions to continuously improve data health.

Secoda also connects to your existing quality tools like dbt tests, Soda, and Great Expectations to unify your validation checks in one searchable place.

Why this matters for AI readiness

Traditional governance was about control. Today, it’s about confidence: in your data, your documentation, and your processes. As organizations increasingly rely on AI and LLMs, the margin for error shrinks. AI-first teams need more than metadata. They need:

• Trustworthy, well-documented data
• Complete visibility across systems
• Automated enrichment and quality checks
• Collaboration that meets people in their workflow

Snowflake Horizon lays the foundation for data governance in Snowflake. Secoda transforms it into a complete, cross-platform, AI-ready operating model for data governance.

Final thoughts

Snowflake Horizon is a powerful step forward for native data governance. It brings discovery, compliance, and privacy controls closer to the core of the Snowflake Data Cloud. For teams already deep in Snowflake, Horizon helps build trust in governed assets and streamlines how policies are applied and enforced. However, metadata doesn’t live in just one platform. Visibility, collaboration, and AI readiness require more than first-party tooling. That’s where Secoda comes in.

Secoda builds on Horizon’s foundation to deliver complete, AI-ready governance across your entire data stack. From Snowflake to dbt, Airflow, and BI tools, Secoda adds the context, workflows, and automation needed to govern data at scale and move faster on AI initiatives.

Secoda + Snowflake = end-to-end governance, AI-ready from day one.

Let’s talk about how Secoda can accelerate your AI roadmap. Book a demo → https://www.secoda.co/contact-sales