Frequently Asked Questions

Qarion is pronounced like "carry on" (/ˈkær.i.ɒn/). The name reflects our mission — to help data teams carry on with confidence, knowing their data is governed, trusted, and compliant.

Qarion supports specialised instances deployed in specific geographic locations. If your organization requires data to stay within a particular region (EU, US, APAC), we can provision a dedicated instance in the corresponding cloud region. This ensures your metadata and governance data never leaves the jurisdiction you specify.

Yes. Qarion provides configurable data masking capabilities to protect sensitive information. When previewing data samples or profiling datasets, PII and other sensitive fields can be automatically masked based on data classification rules. This ensures analysts and stewards can work with datasets without exposing raw sensitive data.

Qarion implements a granular, role-based access control (RBAC) system that operates at both the platform level and the data level. Platform permissions control who can manage connectors, define quality checks, approve access requests, and administer the system. Data-level permissions control visibility and actions on specific spaces, data products, and individual assets. Every access decision is logged for audit purposes.

Yes. Qarion supports SSO via SAML 2.0 and OIDC, allowing your team to authenticate using your existing identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, etc.). This eliminates the need for separate credentials, enforces your organization's authentication policies, and simplifies user provisioning. We also support SCIM for automated user lifecycle management.

Qarion provides built-in regulatory mapping for GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA, the EU AI Act, and SOX. You can map data assets to specific regulatory articles, schedule recertification reviews, and generate audit-ready compliance reports. The framework is extensible — you can add custom regulations or internal policies as needed.

All data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+). Database credentials and API keys are stored in encrypted vaults and are never logged or exposed in the UI. Qarion never stores your actual source data — only metadata, schema information, and quality check results.

No. Qarion is a metadata-only platform. We connect to your data sources to extract schema information, run quality checks, and build lineage — but we never copy, cache, or store your actual data. Quality checks execute directly on your warehouse, and only the results (pass/fail, row counts, timestamps) are stored in Qarion.

Qarion is available as a managed cloud service or as a self-hosted deployment in your own infrastructure. Self-hosted deployments give you full control over data residency, network isolation, and security configurations. Both options include the same feature set and receive regular updates.

Yes. Qarion supports multi-instance configurations where each tenant gets their own isolated environment with separate databases, configuration, and access controls. This is ideal for managed service providers, consulting firms, or enterprises with strict data segregation requirements between business units.

Qarion ships with 20+ built-in connectors spanning data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Databricks), BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI, Metabase, Superset), transformation layers (dbt Cloud, dbt Manifest), SaaS applications (Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Zendesk), and alerting channels (Slack, Microsoft Teams). Custom connectors can be added via our extensible framework.

Most organizations are up and running within a day. Connect your first data source, run an initial metadata sync, and you'll have a searchable catalog within minutes. From there, you can incrementally add quality checks, ownership assignments, and compliance mappings at your own pace.

No. Qarion sits alongside your existing tools — it connects to what you already use via read-only integrations. There's nothing to migrate, no agents to install on your databases, and no changes needed to your ETL pipelines.

We offer a guided trial where we help you connect your first data sources and experience the platform with your own data. Reach out via our contact page to schedule a demo and discuss trial options tailored to your organization.