Snowflake to Block Single-Factor Authentication: What You Need to Know

Beginning in April 2025, Snowflake will be making changes to their security requirements and blocking single-factor authentication with passwords.  This change means that Esri customers who are using Snowflake may need to adjust.  

Read on to see if you’ll be impacted and learn how to keep your web layers running smoothly. 

What is changing?  

Snowflake signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Secure by Design pledge and will start enforcing multi-factor authentication (MFA) as early as April 2025. In general, software with web service architectures like ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online do not support authentication types that require user interaction, like MFA, which is why this will impact Esri customers. Our customers will need to prepare for this change, or their connections to Snowflake will stop working in ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Data Pipelines. 

Who will be impacted?  

All users of ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Data Pipelines (an app that enables users to connect to Snowflake in ArcGIS Online) who have integrated data from Snowflake will be impacted when MFA is enforced.

Users of ArcGIS Pro who have connected to Snowflake using user authentication (username and password) will also be impacted. 

What can you do?  

If you’re using Snowflake, your administrator may delay the changes from April 2025 until later in the year. For detailed information, please refer to this Snowflake article: FAQ: Snowflake Will Block Single-Factor Password Authentication by November 2025. 

Additionally, review this technical support article for more detailed information if you are a user of ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, and/or ArcGIS Data Pipelines who has integrated data from Snowflake: FAQ: What are Esri’s recommendations to mitigate potential disruptions due to Snowflake’s upcoming multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforcement?

We wanted to share this information to ensure you’re aware of the upcoming changes. Please check back here for the latest updates and don’t hesitate to reach out to your Account team or contact our technical support team if you have any questions.