1. Security

This sections covers Security configuration for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire, which includes both Authentication & Authorization (collectively, Auth) as well as Transport Layer Security (TLS) using SSL.

Securing Data at Rest is not generally supported by either Apache Geode, Pivotal GemFire or Pivotal Cloud Cache (PCC) yet.

1.1. Authentication & Authorization

Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire employs Username and Password based {apache-geode-docs}/managing/security/authentication_overview.html[Authentication] along with Role-based {apache-geode-docs}/managing/security/authorization_overview.html[Authorization] to secure your client to server data exchanges and operations.

Spring Data for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SDG) provides {spring-data-geode-docs-html}/#bootstrap-annotation-config-security[first-class support] for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire’s Security framework, which is based on the {apache-geode-javadoc}/org/apache/geode/security/SecurityManager.html[SecurityManager] interface. Additionally, Apache Geode’s Security framework is integrated with Apache Shiro, making the security for servers an even easier and more familiar task.

Eventually, support and integration with Spring Security will be provided by SBDG as well.

When you use Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG), which builds on the bits provided in Spring Data for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SDG), it makes short work of enabling Auth in both your clients and servers.

1.1.1. Auth for Servers

The easiest and most standard way to enable Auth in the servers of your cluster is to simply define 1 or more Apache Shiro Realms as beans in the Spring ApplicationContext.

For example:

Declaring an Apache Shiro Realm
@Configuration
class ApacheGeodeSecurityConfiguration {

    @Bean
    DefaultLdapRealm ldapRealm(..) {
        return new DefaultLdapRealm();
    }

    ...
}

When an Apache Shiro Realm (e.g. DefaultLdapRealm) is declared and registered in the Spring ApplicationContext as a Spring bean, Spring Boot will automatically detect this Realm bean (or Realm beans if more than 1 is configured) and the Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire servers in the cluster will automatically be configured with Authentication and Authorization enabled.

Alternatively, you can provide an custom, application-specific implementation of Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire’s {apache-geode-javadoc}/org/apache/geode/security/SecurityManager.html[SecurityManager] interface, declared and registered as a bean in the Spring ApplicationContext:

Declaring a custom Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire SecurityManager
@Configuration
class ApacheGeodeSecurityConfiguration {

    @Bean
    CustomSecurityManager customSecurityManager(..) {
        return new CustomSecurityManager();
    }

    ...
}

Spring Boot will discover your custom, application-specific SecurityManager implementation and configure the servers in the Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire cluster with Authentication and Authorization enabled.

The Spring team recommends that you use Apache Shiro to manage the Authentication & Authorization of your Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire servers over implementing Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire’s SecurityManager interface.

1.1.2. Auth for Clients

When Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire servers have been configured with Authentication & Authorization enabled, then clients must authenticate when connecting.

Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG) makes this easy, regardless of whether you are running your Spring Boot, ClientCache applications in a local, non-managed environment or even when running in a managed environment, like Pivotal CloudFoundry (PCF).

Non-Managed Auth for Clients

To enable Auth for clients connecting to a secure Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire cluster, you simply only need to set a username and password in your Spring Boot application.properties file:

# Spring Boot client application.properties

spring.data.gemfire.security.username = jdoe
spring.data.gemfire.security.password = p@55w0rd

Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG) will handle the rest.

Managed Auth for Clients

Enabling Auth for clients connecting to a Pivotal Cloud Cache (PCC) service instance in Pivotal CloudFoundry (PCF) is even easier.

You do not need to do anything!

When your Spring Boot application uses SBDG and is bound to PCC, then when you push (i.e. deploy) your app to PCF, Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG) will extract the required Auth credentials from the environment that you setup when you provisioned a PCC service instance in your PCF organization & space. PCC automatically assigns 2 users with roles "cluster_operator" and "developer", respectively, to any Spring Boot application bound to the PCC service instance.

By default, SBDG will auto-configure your Spring Boot app to run with the user having the "_cluster_operator" Role. This ensures that your Spring Boot app has the necessary permissions (i.e. Authorization) to perform all data access operations on the servers in the PCC cluster including, for example, pushing configuration metadata from the client to the servers in the PCC cluster.

See the section, <<[cloudfoundry-cloudcache-security-auth-runtime-user-configuration,Running Spring Boot applications as a specific user>>, in the Pivotal Cloud Foundry chapter for additional details on user authentication and authorization.

See the chapter titled 'Pivotal CloudFoundry' for more general details.

See the {pivotal-cloudcache-docs}/security.html[Pivotal Cloud Cache documentation] for security details when using PCC and PCF.

1.2. Transport Layer Security using SSL

Securing data in motion is also essential to the integrity of your application.

For instance, it would not do much good to send usernames and passwords over plain text Socket connections between your clients and servers, nor send sensitive data over those same connections.

Therefore, both Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire support SSL between clients & servers, JMX clients (e.g. Gfsh) and the Manager, HTTP clients when using the Developer REST API or Pulse, between peers in the cluster, and when using the WAN Gateway to connect multiple sites (i.e. clusters).

Spring Data for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SDG) provides first-class support for configuring and enabling SSL as well. Still, Spring Boot makes it even easier to configure and enable SSL, especially during development.

Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire require certain properties to be configured, which translate to the appropriate javax.net.ssl.* properties required by the JRE, to create Secure Socket Connections using JSSE.

But, ensuring that you have set all the required SSL properties correctly is an error prone and tedious task. Therefore, Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG) applies some basic conventions for you, out-of-the-box.

Simply create a trusted.keystore, JKS-based KeyStore file and place it in 1 of 3 well-known locations:

  1. In your application JAR file at the root of the classpath.

  2. In your Spring Boot application’s working directory.

  3. In your user home directory (as defined by the user.home Java System property).

When this file is named trusted.keystore and is placed in 1 of these 3 well-known locations, Spring Boot for Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire (SBDG) will automatically configure your client to use SSL Socket connections.

If you are using Spring Boot to configure and bootstrap an Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire server:

Spring Boot configured and bootstrapped Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire server
@SpringBootApplication
@CacheServerApplication
class SpringBootApacheGeodeCacheServerApplication {
    ...
}

Then, Spring Boot will apply the same procedure to enable SSL on the servers, between peers, as well.

During development it is convenient not to set a trusted.keystore password when accessing the keys in the JKS file. However, it is highly recommended that you secure the trusted.keystore file when deploying your application to a production environment.

If your trusted.keystore file is secured with a password, you will need to additionally specify the following property:

Accessing a secure trusted.keystore
# Spring Boot application.properties

spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.keystore.password = p@55w0rd!

You can also configure the location of the keystore and truststore files, if they are separate, and have not been placed in 1 of the default, well-known locations searched by Spring Boot:

Accessing a secure trusted.keystore
# Spring Boot application.properties

spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.keystore = /absolute/file/system/path/to/keystore.jks
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.keystore.password = keystorePassword
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.truststore = /absolute/file/system/path/to/truststore.jks
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.truststore.password = truststorePassword

See the SDG {spring-data-geode-javadoc}/org/springframework/data/gemfire/config/annotation/EnableSsl.html[EnableSsl] annotation for all the configuration attributes and the corresponding properties expressed in application.properties.

1.3. Securing Data at Rest

Currently, neither Apache Geode nor Pivotal GemFire along with Spring Boot or Spring Data for Apache Geode and Pivotal GemFire offer any support for securing your data while at rest (e.g. when your data has been overflowed or persisted to disk).

To secure data at rest when using Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire, with or without Spring, you must employ 3rd party solutions like disk encryption, which is usually highly contextual and technology specific.

For example, to secure data at rest using Amazon EC2, see Instance Store Encryption.