The document outlines strategies for securing MongoDB deployments, emphasizing the importance of access control, data protection, and security auditing. It discusses authentication methods, role-based access control, data encryption both in transit and at rest, and the significance of planning security from the onset of system design. Additionally, it highlights best practices and provides references for further reading on MongoDB security.

2. Securing Your MongoDB
Deployment
Andreas Nilsson
Lead Security Engineer, MongoDB

3. 3
The Art Of Securing A System
“If you know the enemy and know yourself,
you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War 500 BC

4. 4
Securing The Application: Agenda
Securing a Database Access Control
AuditingData Protection

5. How can we make data accessible securely?

6. 6
Timeline
Plan and design security as early as possible.

7. Hadoop
Event
Processing
Engine
Analytics
Execution
(R,Python & Pig)
Distributed
File System
HDFS
Stream Analytics
Yellow
Restricted Zone
Green
Controlled Zone
Web Application
REST Web Service
Even Processing
J2EE Tomcat
MongoDB to Hadoop
Connector
MongoDB to Hadoop
Connector
ETL
ETL
Orders
ETL
Operational
Data Store
MongoDB
Content
Management
System
Web Logs
Profiles
Reference Data
Real-time
Event Data
Designing the Infrastructure

8. 8
Access Control
ConfigureAuthentication andAuthorization.

9. 9
MongDB Configuration
Authentication - Who are you in MongoDB?
• Application user, administrator, backup job,
monitoring agent.
Authorization - What can you do in MongoDB?
• CRUD operations, configure the database,
manage sharding, user management.

10. 10
Enable Authentication
Built-in authentication methods
• Password challenge response
• x.509 certificates
Or integrate with existing authentication infrastructure

11. 11
Enable Access Control
Design
• Determine which types of users exist in the system.
• Match the users to MongoDB roles. Create any
customized roles.
Deployment
• Start/restart MongoDB with access control enabled.
• Create the desired users.

12. 12
Role Based Access Control
Built-in roles
• read, readWrite, dbAdmin, clusterAdmin, root, etc..
User defined roles
• Customized roles based on existing roles and privileges.

13. Internal Authentication
Server-Server authentication
use shared keyfile
or x.5909.

14. 14
Sharding, upgrading, and other fancy topics
Users in a sharded system
• live on the config servers, not the query routers (mongos)
• local shard (replica set) users can still exist
Users in 2.4
• located in different DBs and in a different format than:
Users in >= 2.6
• all reside in the admin DB and hence are always replicated.

15. 15
Field Level Redaction - $redact
$redact
• New aggregation framework operator
• Conditionally filter user documents
Use cases
• Implement user-based document level, content filtering.
• Create egress filter, redacting sensitive information.

16. Access Control – Field Level Redaction

17. 17
Data Protection
Encrypting data in transit (SSL) and data at rest.

18. Data Protection End to End

19. 19
Transport Encryption with SSL
• Possible to protect client-server, server-server
communications with SSL.
• Support for commercially and internally issued x.509
certificates
• Possible to run the server in FIPS 140-2 mode.
• Support for mixed SSL and non-SSL clusters.
• Self-signed certificates provides no trust!
• Omitting to provide a CA file to MongoDB disables validation!

20. Data Protection – Transport Encryption
• Encrypt Communications (SSL)
• Authenticate connections (x.509)

21. 21
Data Protection – Encryption at rest
Alternatives
• Encrypt data client side
• Use partner or independent solution for file and OS level
encryption

22. 22
Security Auditing

23. 23
The Audit Log
• Security events can be written to either the console, the
syslog or a file (JSON/BSON)
• By default, all security events are written to audit log when
enabled.
• Events include Authentication failures and some commands.
• Access control is not required for auditing.
• They are separate components.

24. 24
Audit Log Properties
• Can filter based off of different criteria
– Action Type, TimeFrame, IP Address/Port, Users
• Events Have Total Order Per Connection
• Audit Guarantees (AKA Writes/config)
– Audit event written to disk BEFORE writing to the
journal
– A write will not complete before it has been audited

25. Some Final Tips

26. 26
Some tips along the way
1. Do not directly expose database servers to the Internet
2. Design and configure access control
3. Enable SSL
4. Provide SSL CA files to the client and server as trust base
5. Disable any unnecessary interfaces
6. Lock down database files and minimize account privileges

27. 27
DO YOU NEED: YES NO
Advanced security? ✓
Disaster Recovery? ✓
Monitoring for system performance and availability? ✓
Automated lifecycle management? ✓
Guaranteed response time SLA? ✓
Platform certification ✓
Enterprise Decision Checklist

28. 28
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced
Features
MongoDB Ops Manager ✓
Advanced Security ✓
On-Demand Training ✓
SLA (24x365)
1 hour
(faster times optional)
License Commercial
Price $10,000 / Server / Yr.

29. 29
What Did We Talk About?
Securing a Database Access Control
AuditingData Protection

30. 30
The Art Of Securing A System
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is
evolved.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War 500 BC

31. 31
Next Steps
MongoDB Security Manual
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/security-introduction/
MongoDB Security Whitepaper -
http://info.mongodb.com/rs/mongodb/images/MongoDB_Se
curity_Architecture_WP.pdf

32. Thank You!
Andreas Nilsson
Lead Security Engineer, MongoDB