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Certificate vs. Certificate Fingerprint in SSO – A Common Point of Confusion

2026-07-21T10:23:14.194-05:00

While configuring SSO recently, I noticed a common question: Why do some applications ask for a certificate fingerprint instead of the actual certificate?

Here's a quick explanation:

🔹 Certificate (X.509 Certificate)

Contains the public key, issuer, validity period, and digital signature.
Used to verify SAML assertions or JWT signatures.

🔹 Certificate Fingerprint (Thumbprint)

A cryptographic hash of the certificate (typically SHA-1 or SHA-256).
Used as a unique identifier for a certificate.
Much smaller than the certificate itself.

Some SSO applications require you to upload the full certificate, while others only ask for the certificate fingerprint. If a fingerprint is required, you can generate it from the certificate:


# SHA-1
openssl x509 -in certificate.pem -noout -fingerprint -sha1

# SHA-256
openssl x509 -in certificate.pem -noout -fingerprint -sha256

If you're using Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), you can download the signing certificate from the Federation Metadata URL and generate the required fingerprint.

💡 Key takeaway: The fingerprint is derived from the certificate—it isn't a different certificate. Whether you provide the certificate or its fingerprint depends on what the Service Provider expects during SSO configuration.

Have you come across applications that still require only the SHA-1 fingerprint instead of the full certificate? I'd be interested to hear your experience.

A Layered Access Management Model for Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)

2026-06-30T20:58:48.336-05:00

A Layered Access Management Model for Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)

Scalable, governable RBAC across AEP, Customer Journey Analytics, and Adobe Data Collection
As Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) implementations grow across business units, regions, and use cases, managing user access can quickly become complex. One of the most common challenges is providing the right level of access while maintaining governance, security, and operational simplicity.
During a recent AEP implementation, I adopted a layered access management model that leverages Adobe's native capabilities while keeping the architecture scalable and easy to maintain. Rather than creating numerous Product Profiles for every business role, the model separates identity, product entitlement, and platform authorization.
In short
Assign people to User Groups (who they are). Each group grants access along two parallel tracks: Product Profiles (which Adobe apps — and these fully govern Customer Journey Analytics and Data Collection) and AEP Roles (what a user can do on platform resources, scoped by sandbox). The two tracks meet in only a couple of narrow spots — for example, a CJA administrator managing Data Management needs a minimal AEP Role. Keep each layer doing one job and you get least-privilege access without a sprawl of Product Profiles.
The group, profile, and role names below are illustrative — swap in your own naming convention as you adapt the model.

Access Management Architecture

Access Management Principles

Before diving into the layers, it helps to establish the ground rules the model operates by:
User access is provisioned through Adobe User Groups — the only object you assign people to.
Each User Group is mapped to one or more Product Profiles and/or AEP Roles based on business responsibilities.
Users may belong to multiple User Groups as required by their job functions.
Product Profiles govern access to Adobe applications and their capabilities. Customer Journey Analytics and Data Collection are managed almost entirely through Product Profiles — they need an AEP Role only for the two capabilities that reach into platform resources (CJA Data Management and Data Collection datastreams).
AEP Roles govern access to Adobe Experience Platform resources only — sandboxes, datasets, schemas, identities, and other platform capabilities.
Sandbox access is controlled through AEP Role assignments. Administrative capabilities (Manage Sandboxes, Manage Packages, Reset Sandboxes) are restricted to designated platform administrator roles.
Access follows the principle of least privilege — only the permissions required to perform a responsibility.
Production administrative access is restricted to authorized platform administrators, while development activities are performed within designated non-production sandboxes.
Permissions are additive. When a user belongs to multiple User Groups, their effective access is the union of all permissions granted through the associated Product Profiles and AEP Roles. Design groups so overlapping membership never accidentally escalates privilege.

Layer 1 – Adobe Admin Console User Groups

User Groups represent business personas, not technical permissions. Examples include:
Platform Administrators
Platform Developers
Data Engineers
Data Analysts
Customer Journey Analytics Administrators
Customer Journey Analytics Business Users
Data Collection Administrators
Data Collection Developers
This simplifies onboarding and offboarding, since users are assigned to business groups instead of individual permissions.

Layer 2 – Adobe Product Profiles

Product Profiles determine which Adobe applications a user can access. Instead of creating Product Profiles for every business role, I recommend a hybrid approach.
For Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Data Collection, the Product Profile is almost the entire access model — capabilities within those applications (Connections, Data Views, tags, rules, and so on) are controlled by the profile itself.
There are two narrow exceptions: the capabilities that reach into AEP platform resources. Managing CJA Data Management (Connections & Data Views) and creating Data Collection datastreams each require a small, dedicated AEP Role in addition to the Product Profile, because both write to or read from platform objects (datasets, schemas, sandboxes). Everything else in these two applications is profile-governed.
Product Product Profile Type
Adobe Experience Platform AEP-Default-All-Users OOTB
Customer Journey Analytics CJA Administrator Custom
Customer Journey Analytics CJA Business User Custom
Adobe Data Collection Data Collection Administrator Custom
Adobe Data Collection Data Collection Developer Custom

Product	Product Profile	Type
Adobe Experience Platform	AEP-Default-All-Users	OOTB
Customer Journey Analytics	CJA Administrator	Custom
Customer Journey Analytics	CJA Business User	Custom
Adobe Data Collection	Data Collection Administrator	Custom
Adobe Data Collection	Data Collection Developer	Custom

Why a Hybrid Approach?

Use the OOTB AEP-Default-All-Users Product Profile as the standard platform entitlement.
Create custom Product Profiles only where business segregation is required, such as Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Data Collection.
Keep Product Profiles focused on application access, not detailed permissions.

Layer 3 – AEP Roles

AEP Roles determine what users can do inside Adobe Experience Platform. They apply only to AEP platform resources — Customer Journey Analytics and Data Collection are otherwise handled through Product Profiles, apart from the two narrow crossovers noted earlier (CJA Data Management and Data Collection datastreams).

Sample AEP Roles

Role Example Permissions
Platform Administrator Manage Sandboxes, Datasets, Schemas, Sources, Destinations, Identity, Governance, Query Service
Platform Developer Create and modify Schemas, Datasets, Sources, Destinations, Queries (typically non-production)
Data Engineer Manage Data Ingestion, Schemas, Datasets, Monitoring
Data Analyst Read Datasets, Execute Queries, View Schemas
CJA Data Management (minimal) Minimal AEP access to the datasets and schemas that back CJA Connections and Data Views — the only place CJA touches an AEP Role
Data Collection Datastreams (minimal) Manage Datastreams plus view access to the target sandbox, datasets, and schemas — the only place Data Collection touches an AEP Role
The key idea is to keep Product Profiles simple while using AEP Roles to enforce least-privilege access on the platform.

Role	Example Permissions
Platform Administrator	Manage Sandboxes, Datasets, Schemas, Sources, Destinations, Identity, Governance, Query Service
Platform Developer	Create and modify Schemas, Datasets, Sources, Destinations, Queries (typically non-production)
Data Engineer	Manage Data Ingestion, Schemas, Datasets, Monitoring
Data Analyst	Read Datasets, Execute Queries, View Schemas
CJA Data Management (minimal)	Minimal AEP access to the datasets and schemas that back CJA Connections and Data Views — the only place CJA touches an AEP Role
Data Collection Datastreams (minimal)	Manage Datastreams plus view access to the target sandbox, datasets, and schemas — the only place Data Collection touches an AEP Role

Example Access Mapping

Business Persona Admin Console User Group Product Profile AEP Role
Platform Administrator Platform Admins AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB) Platform Administrator
Platform Developer Platform Developers AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB) Platform Developer
Data Engineer Data Engineering AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB) Data Engineer
Data Analyst Analytics Team AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB) Data Analyst
CJA Administrator CJA Administrators CJA Administrator Minimal — Data Management only
CJA Business User CJA Business Users CJA Business User None
Data Collection Administrator Data Collection Admins Data Collection Administrator N/A
Data Collection Developer Data Collection Developers Data Collection Developer N/A
Reading the table: each persona gets exactly one User Group, which carries the Product Profile and (where applicable) the AEP Role. None / N/A means the persona needs no AEP Role — Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Data Collection are otherwise governed by their Product Profiles, not by AEP RBAC. The two platform crossovers are handled explicitly: CJA Data Management is granted here on the CJA Administrator (a minimal AEP Role for the underlying datasets and schemas), while Data Collection datastreams are owned by the Platform Administrator in this example — which is why the Data Collection personas show N/A. If your Data Collection team owned datastreams instead, they would carry a minimal AEP Role too.

Business Persona	Admin Console User Group	Product Profile	AEP Role
Platform Administrator	Platform Admins	AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB)	Platform Administrator
Platform Developer	Platform Developers	AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB)	Platform Developer
Data Engineer	Data Engineering	AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB)	Data Engineer
Data Analyst	Analytics Team	AEP-Default-All-Users (OOTB)	Data Analyst
CJA Administrator	CJA Administrators	CJA Administrator	Minimal — Data Management only
CJA Business User	CJA Business Users	CJA Business User	None
Data Collection Administrator	Data Collection Admins	Data Collection Administrator	N/A
Data Collection Developer	Data Collection Developers	Data Collection Developer	N/A

Customer Journey Analytics Consideration

Customer Journey Analytics access is normally governed entirely by its Product Profile. There is one exception worth calling out.
If a user is responsible for managing Connections, Data Views, and Data Management in CJA, the CJA Product Profile alone is not sufficient. In addition to it, the user should also:
Hold the AEP application Product Profile (e.g., AEP-Default-All-Users) so they can reach the Adobe Experience Platform interface, where Data Management lives.
Have a minimal AEP Role that grants access to the datasets and schemas backing those Connections and Data Views. This is the only situation in which CJA relies on an AEP Role.
Be assigned as a Product Administrator in the Adobe Admin Console when responsible for administering Customer Journey Analytics.
Understanding the distinction between Product Profiles, Product Administrators, and AEP Roles is critical when designing access for CJA administrators.

Separation of Responsibilities

One of the biggest advantages of this model is that every layer has a clear purpose.
Layer Responsibility
Admin Console User Group Represents the user's business function
Product Profile Determines which Adobe products the user can access
AEP Role Determines what the user can do within AEP
Sandbox Permissions Determines where the user can perform those actions
Keeping these responsibilities separate results in a cleaner and more maintainable access model.

Layer	Responsibility
Admin Console User Group	Represents the user's business function
Product Profile	Determines which Adobe products the user can access
AEP Role	Determines what the user can do within AEP
Sandbox Permissions	Determines where the user can perform those actions

Benefits

This approach provides several advantages:
Reduced number of Product Profiles
Simplified onboarding and offboarding
Better governance and auditability
Clear separation of business and technical responsibilities
Easier administration
Scalable role-based access control (RBAC)
Improved security through the Principle of Least Privilege

How to Apply This Model

If you want to adapt this in your own tenant, a practical order of operations is:
List your business personas. Start from what people actually do (administer, develop, engineer, analyze, report) — not from Adobe's technical objects.
Create one User Group per persona in the Admin Console. This is the only thing you'll assign people to.
Default to the OOTB AEP Product Profile. Add custom Product Profiles only where you need product-level segregation (e.g., CJA, Data Collection).
Define AEP Roles for least privilege and map each platform User Group to the role that matches its persona. Groups that only need CJA or Data Collection generally require no AEP Role — the exceptions are the two crossovers (CJA Data Management, and Data Collection datastreams if that team owns them).
Scope with sandbox permissions so non-production personas can't touch production.
Handle CJA administration separately — remember the Product Administrator assignment for anyone managing Connections and Data Views (see the note above).
Document the mapping (a table like the one above) and make it the single source of truth for onboarding and audits.
Rule of thumb: if you're about to create a new Product Profile, first ask whether an AEP Role or sandbox permission can express the same intent. Reserve Product Profiles for product access, and let Roles handle what and where.

Final Thoughts

As AEP deployments mature, access management becomes a critical success factor. Rather than treating User Groups, Product Profiles, and AEP Roles as interchangeable, defining a clear responsibility for each layer results in a governance model that is scalable, maintainable, and easier to operate.
This layered approach has worked well in practice by reducing administrative overhead while maintaining flexibility for different Adobe products such as AEP, Customer Journey Analytics, and Adobe Data Collection.
I'd be interested to hear how others are designing their AEP access models. Are you using mostly OOTB Product Profiles, creating custom Product Profiles, or adopting a layered RBAC strategy similar to this?

Troubleshooting Snowflake Source Connection Issues in Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)

2026-06-23T15:49:21.764-05:00

While configuring Snowflake as a source in Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), I encountered a generic authentication error that initially appeared to be related to credentials or key-pair authentication. However, as with many integration issues, the root cause was not immediately obvious.

This experience highlighted several areas worth validating whenever a Snowflake-to-AEP connection fails.

Common Areas to Investigate

1. Verify Snowflake Credentials and Permissions

Before diving into advanced troubleshooting, confirm:

Username is correct
Assigned role has access to the warehouse, database, schema, and objects
Warehouse is active
Account identifier is configured correctly

Many connection failures originate from simple configuration issues.

2. Validate Key-Pair Authentication

If you're using key-pair authentication, ensure:

The private key is in a supported format (typically PKCS#8)
The corresponding public key is registered against the Snowflake user
The correct private key is being supplied to the connector

A common point of confusion is the distinction between:

.p8 files
.pem files
Base64-encoded private keys

The file extension itself is less important than the underlying content. Both .p8 and .pem files can contain valid PEM-formatted private keys.

AEP integrations require the private key to be single line and supplied as a Base64-encoded string

3. Generating a Base64-Encoded Private Key

Linux: Run the first command to convert the key to a single line, then run the second command to generate the Base64-encoded value.

awk '

/BEGIN PRIVATE KEY/ {gsub(/\r/,""); print; next}
/END PRIVATE KEY/   {gsub(/\r/,""); print ""; print; next}
{gsub(/\r/,""); printf "%s",$0}
' private_key_prod.p8 > private_key_single_line.p8


cat private_key_single_line.p8 | base64 -w0 > private_key_base64.txt

The equivalent Python script is:

import base64

input_file = "snowflake_private_key_prod.p8"
output_file = "snowflake_private_key_base64.txt"

# Read as text
with open(input_file, "r") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()

# Remove newlines while preserving PEM header/footer structure
cleaned_lines = [line.strip() for line in lines if line.strip()]

header = cleaned_lines[0]
footer = cleaned_lines[-1]
key_body = "".join(cleaned_lines[1:-1])

cleaned_key = "{}\n{}\n{}".format(
    header,
    key_body,
    footer
)

# Base64 encode the cleaned PEM content
encoded_key = base64.b64encode(
    cleaned_key.encode("utf-8")
).decode("utf-8")

with open(output_file, "w") as f:
    f.write(encoded_key)

print("Base64-encoded key saved to {}".format(output_file))
print(f"Base64-encoded key saved to {output_file}")

This produces the same output as the Linux command and works across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

4. Check Network Policies and IP Whitelisting

One of the most overlooked causes of authentication failures is network access.

Even when credentials and keys are configured correctly, Snowflake may reject incoming connections if:

Network policies are enabled
IP allowlists are configured
Corporate firewalls restrict outbound traffic
Adobe Experience Platform IP ranges are not permitted

In these cases, the error may still appear as a generic authentication failure.

A useful question to ask is:

Is there a Snowflake Network Policy or IP allowlist that could be blocking connections from Adobe Experience Platform?

5. Verify Source Configuration

Review:

Account identifier
Authentication method
User configuration
Warehouse, database, and schema access
Source object selection (table/view)

Small configuration inconsistencies can prevent successful authentication.

Validating Connectivity Outside AEP

Before spending too much time troubleshooting the AEP connector, it can be helpful to validate the Snowflake connection directly from your local machine. This helps isolate whether the issue is related to Snowflake authentication and connectivity or specific to the AEP source configuration.

Use the Python script below to validate connectivity from your local environment outside of AEP.

Note: If Snowflake Network Policies or IP whitelisting are enabled, ensure your local IP address is allowed. For initial testing, you may consider temporarily relaxing or disabling the network policy (following your organization's security guidelines) to eliminate IP restrictions as a potential cause.

In my case, the issue was not related to Snowflake connectivity or IP whitelisting. The root cause was an improperly encoded private key value being supplied to the connector. Running this local validation helped quickly narrow down the troubleshooting scope and confirm that key-pair authentication was working correctly outside of AEP.


import snowflake.connector
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import serialization

USER = "user"
ACCOUNT = "organization-accountname"
DATABASE = "DATABASE"
WAREHOUSE = "WAREHOUSE"

PRIVATE_KEY_FILE = "snowflake_private_key.p8"

# Read private key from file
with open(PRIVATE_KEY_FILE, "rb") as key_file:
    private_key = serialization.load_pem_private_key(
        key_file.read(),
        password=None,
    )

# Convert to DER format required by Snowflake connector
private_key_der = private_key.private_bytes(
    encoding=serialization.Encoding.DER,
    format=serialization.PrivateFormat.PKCS8,
    encryption_algorithm=serialization.NoEncryption(),
)

conn = snowflake.connector.connect(
    user=USER,
    account=ACCOUNT,
    private_key=private_key_der,
    warehouse=WAREHOUSE,
    database=DATABASE,
)

try:
    cur = conn.cursor()
    cur.execute("""
        SELECT
            CURRENT_ORGANIZATION_NAME(),
            CURRENT_ACCOUNT_NAME(),
            CURRENT_ACCOUNT(),
            CURRENT_USER()
    """)
    print(cur.fetchone())

finally:
    cur.close()
    conn.close()

Key Takeaways

When troubleshooting Snowflake source connections in AEP:

Validate credentials and permissions.
Confirm key-pair authentication is configured correctly.
Ensure private keys are encoded in the expected format.
Check Snowflake network policies and IP allowlists.
Review connector configuration details carefully.

Most importantly, don't assume every authentication error is caused by bad credentials. In many enterprise environments, network restrictions and key-formatting issues are equally likely root causes.

By methodically validating each layer, you can significantly reduce troubleshooting time and get your Snowflake source connected successfully.