Security Features and Setup¶
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Network and Firewall Requirements¶
You must ensure that your application can reach your MongoDB Atlas environment. To ensure connectivity with Atlas, you must whitelist the inbound network access from your application environment to Atlas by either whitelisting public IP addresses, or using VPC / VNet peering to whitelist private IP addresses.
See also
To learn more about IP whitelisting, see Whitelist.
If your firewall blocks outbound network connections, you must also open outbound access from your application environment to Atlas. You must configure your firewall to allow your applications to make outbound connections to ports 27015 to 27017 to TCP traffic on Atlas hosts. This grants your applications access to databases stored on Atlas.
Note
By default, MongoDB Atlas clusters do not need to be able to initiate connections to your application environments. If you wish to enable Atlas clusters with LDAP authentication and authorization, you must allow network access from Atlas clusters directly to your secure LDAP. You can allow access to your LDAP by using public or private IPs as long as a public DNS hostname points to an IP that the Atlas clusters can access.
If you are not using VPC / VNet peering and plan to connect to Atlas using public IP addresses, see the following pages for additional information:
Preconfigured Security Features¶
The following security features are part of the Atlas product:
TLS/SSL¶
Atlas uses TLS/SSL to encrypt the connections to your databases.
Virtual Private Cloud¶
Important
If this is the first M10+ dedicated paid cluster for the selected
region or regions and you plan on creating one or more VPC
peering connections, please review the documentation on VPC peering
connections before continuing.
Required Security Features¶
You must configure the following security features:
Whitelist¶
Atlas only allows client connections to the cluster from entries in the project’s whitelist. To connect, you must add an entry to the whitelist. To set up the whitelist for the project, see Configure Whitelist Entries.
For Atlas clusters deployed on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Microsoft Azure, add the IP addresses of your GCP or Azure services to Atlas project IP whitelist to grant those services access to the cluster.
User Authentication/Authorization¶
Atlas requires clients to authenticate to access the clusters, i.e. the MongoDB databases. You must create database users to access the database. To set up database users to your clusters, see Configure Database Users.
To access clusters in a project, users must belong to that project. Users can belong to multiple projects. See Atlas User Access.
Optional Security Features¶
You may configure the following security features:
Custom Roles¶
Atlas supports creating custom roles in cases where the built-in Atlas database user privileges cannot describe your desired set of privileges.
VPC Peering¶
Atlas supports VPC peering with other AWS, Azure, or GCP VPCs. To use VPC Peering, see Set up a Network Peering Connection.
Private Endpoints¶
Atlas supports private endpoints on AWS using the AWS PrivateLink feature. To use private endpoints, see Set up a Private Endpoint.
Two Factor Authentication¶
Atlas supports Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to help users control access to their Atlas accounts. To use 2FA, see Two Factor Authentication.
User Authentication/Authorization with LDAP¶
Atlas supports performing user authentication and authorization with LDAP. To use LDAP, see Set up User Authentication and Authorization with LDAP.
Encryption at Rest using your Key Management¶
Atlas supports using AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, and GCP to encrypt storage engines and cloud provider backups. To use encryption at rest, see Encryption at Rest using Customer Key Management.
Client-Side Field Level Encryption¶
Atlas supports client-side field level encryption, including automatic encryption of fields.
Note
All Atlas users are entitled to use MongoDB’s automatic client-side field level encryption features.
Prerequisites¶
- Minimum Driver and
mongoVersion The following support client-side field level encryption:
- Official MongoDB drivers compatible with MongoDB Server 4.2 and later, or
mongoshell 4.2 and later.
For more information on official MongoDB drivers, see MongoDB Drivers.
- Minimum Server Version
- Drivers and the
mongoshell can only use client-side field level encryption if connected to a Atlas cluster running MongoDB 4.2 or later.
Note
MongoDB Compass, the Data Explorer, and the MongoDB Shell
(mongosh) do not support decrypting client-side field
level-encrypted fields.
Database Auditing¶
Atlas supports auditing all system event actions. To use database auditing, see Set up Database Auditing.
Restrict MongoDB Support Access to Atlas Backend Infrastructure¶
Organization owners can restrict MongoDB Production Support Employees from accessing Atlas backend infrastructure for any Atlas cluster in their organization. Organization owners may grant a 24 hour bypass to the access restriction at the Atlas cluster level.
Important
Restricting infrastructure access for MongoDB Production Support Employees may increase support issue response and resolution time and negatively impact cluster availability.
To enable this option, see Restrict MongoDB Support Access to Atlas Backend Infrastructure.
Access Tracking¶
Atlas surfaces authentication logs directly in the UI so that you can easily review successful and unsuccesful authentication attempts made against your clusters. To view your database access history, see View Database Access History.