Establishing user identity with strong authentication is the basis for secure access in Hadoop. Users need to reliably identify themselves and then have that identity propagated throughout the Hadoop cluster to access cluster resources. Hortonworks uses Kerberos for authentication. Kerberos is an industry standard used to authenticate users and resources within a Hadoop cluster. HDP also includes Ambari, which simplifies Kerberos setup, configuration, and maintenance.

Apache Knox Gateway is used to ensure perimeter security for Hortonworks customers. With Knox, enterprises can confidently extend the Hadoop REST API to new users without Kerberos complexities, while also maintaining compliance with enterprise security policies. Knox provides a central gateway for Hadoop REST APIs that have varying degrees of authorization, authentication, SSL, and SSO capabilities to enable a single access point for Hadoop.

Apache Knox Features