Overview

Instead of using a basic username/password pair, you can improve security by generating Knox Gateway tokens. Tokens are more secure than plaintext username/password because they are signed, anonymized from the source data, and have a specified lifetime (by default, one hour).

About Knox gateway tokens

Before Cloudera Data Platform 7.2.14, Knox on Cloudera on cloud had two default topologies: cdp-proxy and cdp-proxy-api. To enable passcode tokens, a third Knox topology was added: cdp-proxy-token. While very similar to cdp-proxy-api, the authentication provider for cdp-proxy-token is configured with the JWTFederation provider, so that newly generated tokens can be used.

View Knox token integration

Knox token integration can be accessed via Cloudera Manager or the Knox homepage:

(Recommended) Cloudera Manager: Cloudera Manager > Clusters > Knox > Configuration and search for Knox Token Integration.
Navigate to Cloudera Management Console > Data Lakes > [***YOUR CLUSTER***]. In the Services section, click Token Integration. This will bring you to the Knox homepage. There are two new links on your Knox homepage: Token Management and Token Generation.

Knox token integration in Cloudera works out of the box using the Knox Token Generation page. However, the token integration API can be re-used in your own custom topology.
note
The only restriction of the above approach is that your custom topology must not use the HadoopAuth authentication provider because it won't work with the KNOXTOKEN service due to a known issue (which will be fixed in future releases).