Snowflake GES-C02: Snowflake Gen AI Governance Practice Questions

Resource monitors and budgets are the cost-governance tools designed to cap or alert on credit consumption. CORTEX_USER and the allowlist are access/model controls, not cost caps — they don't limit runaway spend by an already-authorized, approved-model workload. Row access policies and masking govern data visibility, not credit consumption. Cortex Guard filters content safety and cross-region governs geography — neither controls spend.

CORTEX_MODELS_ALLOWLIST restricts which models are permitted for Cortex functions in the account, letting governance teams enforce an approved-model policy. The other options control concurrency, retention, and network access, not model access.

Without SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX_USER, the role cannot invoke any Cortex function at all, including Cortex Analyst, regardless of table SELECT. A row access policy would filter visible rows but not block the ability to invoke Cortex Analyst entirely — the role could still run queries against the visible subset. Enabling cross-region inference affects where inference runs, not whether the role can invoke the function at all. Adding a model to the allowlist expands what's permitted; it doesn't block invocation and is the opposite of a restrictive action.

SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX_USER applies regardless of caller type — human or service account — and is required alongside table privileges. ACCOUNTADMIN is unnecessary and overly broad just to enable Cortex access; least privilege calls for granting only what's needed. Scheduled/automated execution does not bypass Cortex access checks — the same access gate applies. SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX_USER is required for Cortex functions generally, not selectively for Search versus plain LLM functions.

Cortex Guard is the safety layer built specifically to filter unsafe or harmful content out of model responses. SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX_USER controls who may call Cortex at all, not the content of responses. CORTEX_MODELS_ALLOWLIST controls which models may run, not response filtering. A resource monitor governs credit consumption thresholds, unrelated to content safety.