Masthead Data x Daybreak

Ensuring data quality and uptime is of utmost importance to us. We required a secure and cost-effective way to monitor and control our data pipelines. Masthead’s log-based approach offers a comprehensive view of data quality in BigQuery, akin to how DataDog functions for software infrastructure. Masthead ensures that our data pipelines are up and running, thereby guaranteeing no outages in our data system.

Shanhui Bono,
 Lead Data Engineer
99%
data systems availability, without compromising personal data
Industry
Mental Health Care
Company size
117 employees
Founded
2019
Data stack
Google BigQuery, Python, dbt, Looker

Masthead Delivers HIPAA-Compliant Data Observability for Daybreak

The Challenge

With a rapidly growing user base, Daybreak Health faced challenges in handling data coming from a wide range of sources. The platform had to keep its patients’ private data secure under HIPAA regulations. For this reason, data security was one of Daybreak’s top priorities. Most data observability solutions available on the market query data and require read permissions, compromising the security of clients’ sensitive data. Ensuring the protection of patient data was paramount for Daybreak Health when making a decision. The data team required a solution for data observability that would not pose any risk or threat. A solution that wouldn’t compromise the security and privacy of their patients’ data was of the utmost importance.

The Solution

Masthead Data observes all of Daybreak’s data assets (datasets, tables, views, external tables). On top of that, Masthead provides full observability of tools used to transform data or integrate data in Google BigQuery. This provides Daybreak with a 10-feet view of their data infrastructure health and dependencies within it. Masthead brings Daybreak comprehensive data visibility through its data lineage visualization feature, enabling Daybreak teams to have a complete understanding of data dependencies and relationships. This enhances their ability to make informed decisions and effectively manage their data. Additionally, Masthead’s data dictionary feature streamlines data management for Daybreak, allowing Daybreak’s teams to view their datasets and their connections in one place. 

These features perfectly fit Daybreak’s data-driven strategy, which has led them to establish a unique culture where data is viewed as a vital asset that impacts every aspect of the business. With such an approach, Daybreak dove growth and success through informed decision-making and continuous implementation of data insights at all organizational levels. Due to Masthead, the Daybreak team is able to stay informed of the health of their data and quickly identify and address any malfunctions in their data operations. This level of insight and control allows Daybreak to make the best use of their data and use it to drive their business forward.

Use Case

Masthead Data has already helped Daybreak Health improve their data quality by identifying data errors and anomalies in real time. For example, the solution alerted the Daybreak team about a broken extract and load (EL) cron job that dropped the number of records coming to one of their business-critical data tables. While data trust is one of Daybreak’s top priorities that attracts significant investment and determines the company’s mission-critical operations, detecting and solving this problem in the shortest possible terms has been vital for Daybreak. A broken data flow leads Daybreak to significant operational delays. Without Masthead, detecting an error, tracking its root cause, and fixing it would take hours if not days. The cost of any such delay, both financial and reputational, would be extremely high for Daybreak. Fortunately, with Masthead, Daybreak managed to quickly detect and fix the broken cron job. 

The Results

Daybreak Health got a trustworthy partner to help them securely and efficiently observe pipelines, all data assets, and the environment around it. They received full control and visibility of their data, helping Daybreak Health support their unique data-driven approach where every dataset brings certain operational business value to the company and its customers. Thanks to partnering with Masthead, Daybreak has gained complete visibility of its data flows while maintaining high levels of data security and cost-efficient data management. Masthead Data facilitates collaboration between the customer’s data teams on processing data anomalies and helps data teams detect and solve issues fast.