Who Are You? Configuring Kafka Authentication in Strimzi from TLS to Custom Principals | D. Mulder

Don't miss out! Join us at our next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon events in Mumbai, India (18-19 June, 2026), Yokohama, Japan (29-30 July, 2026), and Shanghai, China (8-9 September, 2026). Connect with our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. Learn more at https://kubecon.io Who Are You? Configuring Kafka Authentication in Strimzi from TLS to Custom Principals - Daniel Mulder, Axual Authentication in multi-tenant Kafka environments can quickly become complex. This session follows Axual’s journey from simple, single-tenant Kafka clusters to multi-tenant Strimzi deployments with different PKI and Certificate Authority requirements. Daniel Mulder explains how mTLS works in Strimzi, how certificate identities are mapped to Kafka principals, and how custom Principal Builders can help prevent authorization conflicts and privilege escalation. The session also covers the operational tradeoffs of managing multiple CAs, custom images, and Strimzi version updates. Attendees will learn options for advanced Kafka authentication in Strimzi, including custom listener configurations, OAuth/OIDC-based authentication, username prefixes, and layered setups that combine mTLS with OAuth for stronger tenant isolation.