Which secure communication is supported between the REST proxy and REST clients?

The Kafka REST Proxy, provided as part of Confluent Platform, allows clients to interact with Kafka over REST APIs. When securing communication between REST Proxy and REST clients, it uses TLS (HTTPS).

As per the official Confluent documentation for REST Proxy security:

“The REST Proxy supports HTTPS to encrypt communication between REST clients and the REST Proxy.”

TLS/SSL encryption ensures that data in transit is secure and private.

Other options listed, such as MD5 (a hashing algorithm), SCRAM (an authentication mechanism), and Kerberos (an authentication protocol), do not provide direct encryption of the communication channel itself for REST Proxy. They can be part of broader security configurations (e.g., SCRAM for Kafka brokers, Kerberos for SASL authentication), butTLS (HTTPS)is the explicit mechanism for encrypting data between the REST Proxy and its clients.

Page Reference:

Confluent Kafka: The Definitive Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 9 (“Kafka Security”), Section “REST Proxy Security” (p. 288–289).

Confluent Platform REST Proxy Documentation, “Encryption (HTTPS)”.