MongoDB Atlas Enables Passwordless Authentication With X.509

Your security is our highest priority. It’s now more important than ever to make sure you not only satisfy requirements but exceed them to maintain leverage over competitors who are all held to the same security standards. Let Atlas be your edge.

X.509 Passwordless Authentication

To ensure tighter security controls and adhere to existing security protocols, we’ve enabled passwordless authentication to MongoDB Atlas clusters (tier M10+) with X.509 certificates. You may have already been taking advantage of this feature on many other MongoDB products, but today we’re welcoming Atlas into the X.509 family.

X.509 certificate-file based authentication is the latest industry-standard because it vastly decreases security risk by authenticating directly from a certificate file instead of using passwords that could be forgotten, shared, or compromised. Without passwords, your risk of phishing attacks significantly decreases as your application traffic is secured through un-impersonable certificate signatures. And with X.509, you never have to worry about expiring certificates as you’ll receive automated reminders by Atlas when you’re nearing your certificate expiration date.

Spend less time securing deployments with automated and easily configurable options to ensure standardization with your security requirements. X.509 is supported by two options: “Easy” and “Advanced” so you can choose what best suits your needs. “Easy” auto-generates certificates to authenticate your database users.

Already have pre-existing certificate management infrastructure? Then the "Advanced" X.509 option may be a better choice as it gives the ability to upload your CA certificate to MongoDB Atlas and continue your use of in-house X.509 certificates. The “Advanced” option can additionally be authorization integrated using LDAPS for even tighter security.

Stay Tuned

At MongoDB, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation and bringing you the most unique, cutting edge security features with every release like Client-Side Field Level Encryption, Encryption at Rest. X.509 is just another one of your many advanced data security options in Atlas.