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- Transport Encryption
Transport Encryption¶
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TLS/SSL¶
MongoDB supports TLS/SSL (Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt all of MongoDB’s network traffic. TLS/SSL ensures that MongoDB network traffic is only readable by the intended client.
MongoDB TLS/SSL implementation uses OpenSSL libraries. MongoDB’s SSL encryption only allows use of strong SSL ciphers with a minimum of 128-bit key length for all connections.
Certificates¶
Before you can use SSL, you must have a .pem file containing a public key certificate and its associated private key.
MongoDB can use any valid SSL certificate issued by a certificate authority or a self-signed certificate. If you use a self-signed certificate, although the communications channel will be encrypted, there will be no validation of server identity. Although such a situation will prevent eavesdropping on the connection, it leaves you vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. Using a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority will permit MongoDB drivers to verify the server’s identity.
For example, see TLS/SSL Configuration for Clients.
Identity Verification¶
In addition to encrypting connections, SSL allows for authentication using certificates, both for client authentication and for internal authentication of members of replica sets and sharded clusters.
For more information, see:
FIPS Mode¶
Enterprise Feature
Available in MongoDB Enterprise only.
The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is a U.S. government computer security standard used to certify software modules and libraries that encrypt and decrypt data securely. You can configure MongoDB to run with a FIPS 140-2 certified library for OpenSSL. Configure FIPS to run by default or as needed from the command line.
For an example, see Configure MongoDB for FIPS.
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