Release Notes 2026
August 6, 2026
Section titled “August 6, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Advanced Data Protection
Section titled “Advanced Data Protection”- Shield SDK for Node — AI Data Shield now has a Shield SDK for Node, published on npm as
@altrsoftware/shieldversion 1.0.0. Use it to protect the free text your application sends to a large language model (LLM), so an LLM-powered chatbot works on tokenized or masked values instead of the real ones, and to restore those values for callers your Shield Policy permits. Matches are replaced in place so a prompt keeps its structure, and streaming detokenization restores values correctly when model output arrives in chunks.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Classification job setup no longer asks for a method — choose a collection and a processing location, and ALTR classifies using the classifiers in that collection. The jobs list and the report header now show the processing location.
Important Notices
Section titled “Important Notices”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Re-running older classification jobs — a job that ran with a standalone method that is no longer offered (Snowflake Native, Google DLP, or Google DLP with Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)) can’t be re-run directly. Classifying that data again prompts you to import the default collection that carries the equivalent classifiers for that method first, after which the job proceeds normally. Existing reports keep their results and are not re-processed.
July 31, 2026
Section titled “July 31, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Advanced Data Protection
Section titled “Advanced Data Protection”- AI Data Shield — protect sensitive data in free text, including the prompts and responses that pass through a large language model. AI Data Shield classifies the text you send it and then tokenizes, masks, or leaves each match in the clear according to policy you author. Register an application under Data Configuration > Applications, write the rules that control protection and detokenization on the Shield Policy page, and review every protection and detokenization decision in the Shield Log, including which rule allowed or denied it. The log records where a match occurred rather than the matched value itself.
Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Apache Cassandra — the sidecar integration is now validated against Apache Cassandra 4.1. Register a Cassandra repository, author access policy using Cassandra’s native keyspace, table, and column hierarchy, and monitor query activity in the Query Log. A Cassandra repository targets a single backend node; contact ALTR support about multi-node clusters. Cassandra supports access control and database activity monitoring through the sidecar; contact ALTR support about classification and Security Intelligence Scout on Cassandra.
Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Default Collections — ALTR now provides 5 pre-built collections you can preview and import individually or all at once: ALTR Managed, Google DLP, Amazon Comprehend, Snowflake Native, and Stoplight. Sync picks up ALTR’s later updates to a collection you have imported, and only ever adds: it never removes classifiers or tags you created.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Classifier editor — create, edit, and review a classifier in a dedicated editor, with a rebuilt builder for combining conditions into classifier rules.
- Classifier tags — tag a classifier, a rule, an individual condition, or a nested condition group, then narrow the classifier list with Filter by Tag. A Tags column shows what each classifier carries.
July 24, 2026
Section titled “July 24, 2026”Important Notices
Section titled “Important Notices”Documentation site overhaul
Section titled “Documentation site overhaul”The ALTR documentation site has been overhauled from the ground up — every page rewritten for clarity, navigation reorganized, and coverage brought up to date with the current product. Have a look around — and if you can’t find something or need help with the documentation site, contact ALTR Support.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Repository Name filter for sidecar audit logs — filter sidecar-captured activity in Query Audit Logs by the repository name configured in ALTR, across Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL databases.
Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Easier findings review — in Human-in-the-Loop review, expand or collapse a database, schema, table, or multi-classifier column row by clicking anywhere in the row, not just the arrow.
- Refreshed OLTP connection forms — connecting an Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB database now uses the same styled form as Snowflake and Databricks, with a logo for each database type.
Bug Fixes
Section titled “Bug Fixes”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Databricks classification with Google DLP handles large samples — classification jobs on Databricks no longer fail when sampled content exceeds Google DLP’s request size limit.
- Match Confidence dialogs scroll — long content in Match Confidence dialogs now scrolls.
- Sidecar instances list updates after removal — removing a sidecar instance now updates the instances list immediately.
July 16, 2026
Section titled “July 16, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Human-in-the-Loop classification review — classification jobs can now pause for human review before their report is finalized. Check Needs Human Review when you run a job, and instead of auto-generating its report the job parks at Needs Review once it finishes scanning. Open the findings tree — database, schema, table, column, and classifier — and approve or reject findings at any level; a decision on a parent applies to everything beneath it, and a more specific decision overrides it. Confirm Report stays disabled until every finding is decided and drops the rejected ones from the output, while Cancel Report discards the job. The option is off by default and set per job, and is available for classification on Snowflake, Databricks, and OLTP databases.
Bug Fixes
Section titled “Bug Fixes”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Databricks classification preserves collection-name casing — Databricks classification jobs no longer force the collection name to uppercase. The name now appears exactly as entered in job, report, and log output, matching Snowflake behavior.
July 10, 2026
Section titled “July 10, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”- MongoDB support — the ALTR sidecar now supports MongoDB alongside Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Register a MongoDB database through the data-source wizard and protect it with Access Management Policies, Impersonation, and Database Activity Monitoring. Policies are authored against MongoDB’s native database, collection, and field structure, and data consumers connect through a generated
mongodb://connection string.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Sample size for scheduled classification tasks — recurring classification tasks can now set how much data each scan samples — a fixed number of rows or a percentage of the table — matching what was already available for one-off jobs.
July 2, 2026
Section titled “July 2, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Security Intelligence Scout — a new self-serve way to monitor database activity for Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL databases. Security Intelligence Scout reads your database’s native audit trail on a schedule, so there’s no need to route traffic through a proxy. Activity it captures is available alongside your existing database activity monitoring — in Query Audit Logs, the Activity Dashboard, DAM Alerting, and Audit Reports. Set it up entirely from the Agents page — register an agent, configure your database’s audit settings, and define scan tasks.
Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Amazon Comprehend condition — compound-ruleset classifiers can now match on Amazon Comprehend’s PII entity detection, joining Google DLP and Snowflake Native as external classification signals.
- Data Length and Column Size conditions — two new ways to match columns in compound rulesets: by the byte length of sampled values, or by a column’s declared schema size.
Important Notices
Section titled “Important Notices”Snowflake Native classification retired as a standalone method
Section titled “Snowflake Native classification retired as a standalone method”Snowflake Native is no longer available as a standalone classification method for new classification jobs — new jobs on Snowflake now choose between ALTR Native and Google DLP. The same detection is still available: add a Snowflake Native condition within an ALTR Native classifier.
June 26, 2026
Section titled “June 26, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Notification integrations management — a new Settings → Integrations page gives you one place to manage the channels that deliver your alerts: Slack, webhook, Splunk, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, and ServiceNow. For each channel you can view every connection and its status, send a test delivery, and add, edit, or delete connections. A connection that an alert rule is still using can’t be deleted until you remove it from those rules, and a connection whose deliveries are failing is flagged so you can correct it.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Acknowledge a triggered alert — the action button on a triggered alert is now labeled Acknowledge (previously “Approve”).
- Fuller alert details for OLTP — match-rule alert details for OLTP database events now show the database, schema, table, and statement text behind the alert, matching what’s already shown for Snowflake.
Access Controls
Section titled “Access Controls”- Back button in the Add Policy wizard — the Add Policy wizard now has a Back button at each step, so you can step backward through the wizard instead of starting the policy over.
Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Reliable scheduled classification tasks — recurring (scheduled) classification tasks that use metadata-only sampling can now be created without error (this configuration was previously rejected).
June 19, 2026
Section titled “June 19, 2026”Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Audit Logging
Section titled “Audit Logging”- System Audits for alerting and integrations — System Audits now records changes to your alerting setup. The Alerts category logs when alert rules and their comments are created, updated, or deleted, and the Integrations category logs changes to your notification-integration configurations — the channels that deliver alerts, such as email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Splunk, ServiceNow, and webhooks. This gives you a complete change-history trail for who changed your alerting and delivery configuration.
June 16, 2026
Section titled “June 16, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- Alerting — create alert rules that watch database activity and notify you when it matches. Build match or threshold rules over fields like user, query type, table and column, masked-data access, denials, and volume; assign a severity; and deliver notifications to email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Splunk, ServiceNow, and other webhooks. Alerting works on both Snowflake and OLTP, and is notification-only (it does not block queries).
Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Snowflake Native conditions in compound rulesets — you can now add Snowflake’s privacy and semantic categories as conditions in the compound ruleset builder, combined with regex, Google DLP, and other condition types using AND/OR/NOT logic. Available for Snowflake.
- Column content conditions — classifiers can match on the content format detected in a column, including JSON, XML, CSV, Base64, PDF, Microsoft Office documents (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), RTF, images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF), archives (ZIP, GZIP), and Parquet. Select one or more formats and set a minimum match threshold.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Automatic tagging for ALTR Native jobs — automatic tagging now applies tags from ALTR Native classification results, in addition to Google DLP and Snowflake Native. Classifier name matching is now case-insensitive.
- Compound rulesets on Databricks — Google DLP classification jobs on Databricks now evaluate compound rulesets with decision lineage.
Database Activity Monitoring
Section titled “Database Activity Monitoring”- PostgreSQL SCRAM authentication — the OLTP sidecar now supports SASL/SCRAM-SHA-256, allowing ALTR to proxy PostgreSQL databases that require SCRAM authentication.
- Audit records now include additional detail across database engines, including the original client hostname for SQL Server and application name and connection identifiers for MySQL.
May 29, 2026
Section titled “May 29, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Processing location — ALTR-native Snowflake classification jobs now have a processing location setting. Choose ALTR Hosted (default) to run classification in ALTR’s infrastructure, or In-Warehouse to execute classification directly inside your Snowflake warehouse via SQL UDF pushdown. OLTP jobs always run on the classification agent.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Ignored rules in match breakdown — the match breakdown tooltip (hover a confidence badge in the classification report) now shows rules that were evaluated but did not affect the final confidence score, labeled “ignored.” Helps diagnose why a configured rule did not fire.
Audit Reports
Section titled “Audit Reports”- Audit Report event category — scheduled audit report activity is now visible in System Audits under the Audit Report category.
- The execution status filter is now a single-select dropdown for simpler success/failure filtering.
Unified Policy
Section titled “Unified Policy”- Rule lists now render significantly faster for policies with large numbers of rules.
- The timezone selector hides deprecated timezone aliases and ranks zones by relevance.
Resolved Issues
Section titled “Resolved Issues”Access Controls
Section titled “Access Controls”- Fixed a bug where searching in role and user group dropdowns would stop returning results after selecting an existing option.
May 15, 2026
Section titled “May 15, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Platform
Section titled “Platform”- Passkeys are now available as a second authentication factor. Register a passkey (such as Touch ID or a hardware security key) from Settings > Preferences. Passkeys are an additional option alongside existing 2FA methods (SMS, Email, Authenticator App).
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Match confidence explanations — each High / Medium / Low confidence badge in the classification report now shows a one-sentence explanation on hover describing why that score was assigned. Confidence scores are available on reports run after April 13, 2026.
Audit Reports
Section titled “Audit Reports”- The schedule details panel now shows whether the last scheduled run succeeded or failed, in addition to when it ran.
Resolved Issues
Section titled “Resolved Issues”Access Controls
Section titled “Access Controls”- Fixed a bug where clicking Discard Changes while editing a Unified Policy would return to the same page instead of the link you originally clicked.
May 8, 2026
Section titled “May 8, 2026”Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Classification Report now shows Match Confidence scores (High / Medium / Low) for each matched row. Hover a score to see a one-sentence explanation of the result. Click in to view the specific rule results that contributed to the match. Match Confidence is available for jobs run after April 13, 2026.
May 1, 2026
Section titled “May 1, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Classification
Section titled “Classification”Build classifiers using multiple conditions with AND/OR/NOT logic. The Classifier Editor now supports nested condition groups. Combine ALTR Regex, Snowflake Native, and Data Location rule types using AND, OR, and NOT operators to precisely target the data you want to classify. Conditions can be nested to any depth.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- Classification Report results are now directly linkable. The report detail view has its own URL — bookmark it or share a link with teammates to open a specific report result directly.
Bug Fixes
Section titled “Bug Fixes”Audit Logging
Section titled “Audit Logging”- Scheduled Audit Reports — fixed cron schedule expression validation and an issue where archived report definitions would stop generating report instances.
April 17, 2026
Section titled “April 17, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Audit Reports
Section titled “Audit Reports”Audit Reports is a brand-new capability for turning ALTR’s database activity monitoring data into formatted, reviewable compliance artifacts. Generate reports of database activity — who performed actions, what they did, and when — and review and attest to them inside ALTR.
- Run reports on demand or on a recurring schedule.
- Each generated report produces both a PDF (formatted, capped at 10,000 rows) and a CSV (uncapped — the source of truth for high-volume reports).
- Optional review-and-attestation workflow: configure zero or more approvers per report definition. Reviewers can comment and approve, and approvals are captured as a durable audit trail.
- Available for OLTP data sources (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL) via the ALTR sidecar.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”- The Classification Report grid now includes a page size picker so you can control how many rows appear per page.
OLTP Sidecar
Section titled “OLTP Sidecar”- New
ORCL_SIDECAR_MODEenvironment variable adds a diagnostic passthrough mode for the Oracle sidecar, which forwards traffic directly to the database without inspection. Use this for troubleshooting client connection issues. Note: IDP authentication and policy enforcement are not available while passthrough mode is active — it is not intended for production use.
Policies
Section titled “Policies”- The Unified Policy API now validates OLTP policy inputs more strictly: schema identifiers are rejected for MySQL (which does not use schemas), and the database type cannot be changed after a policy is created.
Databricks
Section titled “Databricks”- Fixed a case where Databricks classification connections could get stuck in an “in progress” state.
April 10, 2026
Section titled “April 10, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”ALTR’s OLTP Classification Agent and Sidecar now support two additional credential providers: Environment Variable and Secret File. These join the existing AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault options, enabling OLTP deployments in environments where cloud-native secret managers aren’t available. The Secret File provider supports live credential rotation without container restarts.
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”Large classification reports now load significantly faster.
The OLTP Classification Agent now supports SSL/TLS configuration for database connections.
Important Notices
Section titled “Important Notices”Email Provider Migration
Section titled “Email Provider Migration”ALTR’s outbound email provider has changed. Emails from ALTR — including classification reports, security notifications, and account alerts — now send from noreply@flare.altr.com. If you aren’t receiving ALTR emails, check your spam folder and allowlist the new sender domain. Learn more
April 3, 2026
Section titled “April 3, 2026”Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”Classification
Section titled “Classification”ALTR-native classification on Snowflake now performs better on large schemas and scales with warehouse size. No configuration changes required — customers benefit automatically. Learn more
ALTR-native classification on OLTP databases (Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server) now performs better on large schemas. Customers benefit automatically on their next classification run. Learn more
When running a classification job, sample size and type are now configured in a dedicated Sample Size step that applies uniformly to all classifiers in the job. Previously, sampling was configured per-classifier. Learn more
March 27, 2026
Section titled “March 27, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”Classification
Section titled “Classification”GDLP classification is now available for OLTP databases. Use your own Google credentials (BYOK) to run scans on data in your OLTP data sources. Learn more
To get started with data classification for OLTP data sources, contact support@altr.com.
You can now create ALTR Native Classification rules that match columns by name, not just by scanning column contents. This is useful when the column name itself is a reliable indicator of sensitive data — for example, columns named ssn, email, or card_number. Learn more
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”System Audits
Section titled “System Audits”The System Audit log now shows the username of who performed each action. Previously, audit entries recorded the action but not the actor — every entry now includes the user responsible for the change. Learn more
Bug Fixes
Section titled “Bug Fixes”Platform
Section titled “Platform”Fixed an issue where saving policies with a large number of rules (1,000+) could time out before completing. Large policy updates now apply reliably.
February 25, 2026
Section titled “February 25, 2026”We are busy enhancing ALTR, but nothing is ready to be released just yet. Check back next week!
February 18, 2026
Section titled “February 18, 2026”We are busy enhancing ALTR, but nothing is ready to be released just yet. Check back next week!
February 11, 2026
Section titled “February 11, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”The OLTP Repository Activity Monitoring Dashboard now supports a 24-hour view. Switch between the last 24 hours and the last 7 days, and all metrics will update accordingly.
February 4, 2026
Section titled “February 4, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”You can now monitor repository activity in ALTR with the new OLTP Repository Activity Monitoring Dashboard, available for customers using OLTP sidecar integrations.
The Activity Monitoring Dashboard gives you a real-time view of how, when and by whom data is accessed to help you validate policy effectiveness, detect unusual activity, and support audits or compliance reviews. Learn more.
January 28, 2026
Section titled “January 28, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”We now support MySQL 8.0 databases. You can securely manage access to MySQL 8.0 databases at scale using ALTR’s sidecar proxy-based connection. To get started using MySQL 8.0, contact ALTR Support .
Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”We updated the impersonation policy creation flow to include a step for selecting a repository type. This ensures the Data Source dropdown shows only data sources associated with the selected repository type, instead of all OLTP data sources, and aligns this flow with other policy creation experiences.
January 21, 2026
Section titled “January 21, 2026”New Features
Section titled “New Features”We now support PostgreSQL databases. You can securely manage access to PostgreSQL databases at scale using ALTR’s sidecar proxy-based connection. To get started using PostgreSQL, contact ALTR Support .
January 15, 2026
Section titled “January 15, 2026”Removed
Section titled “Removed”Snowflake
Section titled “Snowflake”The Data Usage Analytics heat map (under the Analytics menu) and it’s associated Import Data Usage History toggle (on the Data Sources page) have been removed. These capabilities are now replaced by the Activity Monitoring Dashboard, which provides a more flexible and comprehensive way to monitor data usage and activity. All data remains available through query audits.
January 6, 2026
Section titled “January 6, 2026”Enhancements
Section titled “Enhancements”- Snowflake and Google DLP classification scans are now run from the Data ClassificationClassification Reports menu instead of the Data Sources page. This change centralizes all classification scans and reports. As part of this update, previous classification reports are no longer available. To view classification results, run a new scan to regenerate the report. Learn more.
- Editing policy rules is now more reliable. Updates are processed more efficiently, reducing the chance of failures in larger policies.
Deprecations
Section titled “Deprecations”The option to sync Snowflake object tags in the ALTR user interface has been deprecated. You can still perform tag syncing through ALTR’s API.
This change affects the former “Snowflake Classification and Object Tags” and “Snowflake Object Tags” classification options. Classification now relies on Snowflake’s built-in features and no longer syncs object tags into ALTR.