To enable a Fabric Shortcut to access a firewall-protected Data Lake, which step is essential?

• A. Create a Fabric workspace identity
• B. Assign permission to Workspace identity
• C. Allow for Firewall rule
• D. Create a data lake policy

Answer: (A)

To access a firewall-protected Data Lake through a Fabric Shortcut, you need a trusted principal that the Data Lake can recognize and authorize. The essential step is to create a Fabric workspace identity. This identity serves as the authenticated voice of the shortcut when it requests data, and without it there’s no way for the Data Lake to verify who is trying to access it, regardless of firewall settings.

Once that identity exists, you can grant it the necessary permissions to the Data Lake and configure firewall rules to permit its traffic. But those steps only make sense after the workspace identity is in place, because there would be no authenticated entity to receive those permissions or exploit those rules.