Database authentication with Amazon Aurora

Amazon Aurora supports several ways to authenticate database users.

Password authentication is available by default for all DB clusters. For Aurora MySQL and Aurora PostgreSQL, you can also add either or both IAM database authentication and Kerberos authentication for the same DB cluster.

Password, Kerberos, and IAM database authentication use different methods of authenticating to the database. Therefore, a specific user can log in to a database using only one authentication method.

For PostgreSQL, use only one of the following role settings for a user of a specific database:

Don't assign both the rds_iam and rds_ad roles to a user of a PostgreSQL database either directly or indirectly by nested grant access. If the rds_iam role is added to the master user, IAM authentication takes precedence over password authentication so the master user has to log in as an IAM user.

Password authentication

With password authentication, your database performs all administration of user accounts. You create users with SQL statements such as CREATE USER, with the appropriate clause required by the DB engine for specifying passwords. For example, in MySQL the statement is CREATE USER name IDENTIFIED BY password, while in PostgreSQL, the statement is CREATE USER name WITH PASSWORD password.

With password authentication, your database controls and authenticates user accounts. If a DB engine has strong password management features, they can enhance security. Database authentication might be easier to administer using password authentication when you have small user communities. Because clear text passwords are generated in this case, integrating with AWS Secrets Manager can enhance security.

For information about using Secrets Manager with Amazon Aurora, see Creating a basic secret and Rotating secrets for supported Amazon RDS databases in the AWS Secrets Manager User Guide. For information about programmatically retrieving your secrets in your custom applications, see Retrieving the secret value in the AWS Secrets Manager User Guide.

IAM database authentication

You can authenticate to your DB cluster using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) database authentication. With this authentication method, you don't need to use a password when you connect to a DB cluster. Instead, you use an authentication token.

For more information about IAM database authentication, including information about availability for specific DB engines, see IAM database authentication.

Kerberos authentication

Amazon Aurora supports external authentication of database users using Kerberos and Microsoft Active Directory. Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that uses tickets and symmetric-key cryptography to eliminate the need to transmit passwords over the network. Kerberos has been built into Active Directory and is designed to authenticate users to network resources, such as databases.

Amazon Aurora support for Kerberos and Active Directory provides the benefits of single sign-on and centralized authentication of database users. You can keep your user credentials in Active Directory. Active Directory provides a centralized place for storing and managing credentials for multiple DB clusters.

To use credentials from your self-managed Active Directory, you need to setup a trust relationship to the AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory that the DB cluster is joined to.

Aurora PostgreSQL and Aurora MySQL support one-way and two-way forest trust relationships with forest-wide authentication or selective authentication.

In some scenarios, you can configure Kerberos authentication over an external trust relationship. This requires your self-managed Active Directory to have additional settings. This includes but is not limited to Kerberos Forest Search Order.

Aurora supports Kerberos authentication for Aurora MySQL and Aurora PostgreSQL DB clusters. For more information, see Using Kerberos authentication for Aurora MySQL and Using Kerberos authentication with Aurora PostgreSQL.