Goodbye Manual Reviews! AWS Clean Rooms Adds Minimum Aggregation Thresholds to Custom SQL

Hey, Shii-chan here! Today I've got a clever little privacy update from AWS Clean Rooms to share with you.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, the Custom analysis rule type in AWS Clean Rooms now supports minimum aggregation thresholds. Minimum aggregation is a mechanism that protects the privacy of individual data subjects by preventing query results from revealing information about individuals or small groups. With this update, that protection can now be enforced on custom SQL queries too.

The story so far

Here's what the original announcement says:

Previously, enforcing minimum aggregation thresholds on custom SQL required data providers to rely on pre-approved analysis templates and manual code reviews before queries could run.

In other words, if you wanted to enforce minimum aggregation on custom SQL, you had no choice but to use a pre-approved template or have a human manually review the code before the query could run. That was a real hassle when you wanted the flexibility of custom analysis but still had to go through an approval process every time.

What changes

Data providers can now configure minimum aggregation thresholds directly through the Custom analysis rule type. That means safe collaboration on custom SQL, without pre-built queries or manual approval processes.

Specifically, you can now configure:

• The identity column that identifies distinct entities
• The minimum identity count required in the output
• A higher threshold for specific columns
• Which columns can be used for filtering or joins

The original announcement gives an example of a media publisher collaborating with an advertiser, where small or rural zip codes with fewer than 1,000 distinct users are automatically filtered out of query results to protect privacy.

Dive Deep

Minimum aggregation guarantees that every row a query outputs represents at least a specified number of distinct values, such as user IDs. Data providers can specify their own identity column and minimum identity count, and can even set different thresholds per column. The detailed setup steps are covered in the AWS Clean Rooms documentation.

Wrap-up

• AWS Clean Rooms' Custom analysis rule type now supports minimum aggregation thresholds
• Minimum aggregation can be enforced on custom SQL without pre-approved templates or manual code review
• You can configure identity columns, minimum identity counts, per-column thresholds, and which columns allow filtering or joins
• This one's for data engineers in media, advertising, and similar fields who want to collaborate across companies while keeping privacy protections in place!