Managing InfluxDB security

Some customers may choose to install InfluxDB with public internet access, however doing so can inadvertently expose your data and invite unwelcome attacks on your database.

If InfluxDB is being deployed on a publicly accessible endpoint, we strongly recommend authentication be enabled. Otherwise the data will be publicly available to any unauthenticated user.

Check out the sections below for how protect the data in your InfluxDB instance.

Enabling authentication

Password protect your InfluxDB instance to keep any unauthorized individuals from accessing your data.

Resources: Set up Authentication

Managing users and permissions

Restrict access by creating individual users and assigning them relevant read and/or write permissions.

Resources: User Types and Privileges, User Management Commands

Enabling HTTPS

Using HTTPS secures the communication between clients and the InfluxDB server, and, in some cases, HTTPS verifies the authenticity of the InfluxDB server to clients (bi-directional authentication).

Resources: Enabling HTTPS

Securing your host

Ports

If you’re only running InfluxDB, close all ports on the host except for port 8086. You can also use a proxy to port 8086.

InfluxDB uses port 8088 for remote backups and restores. We highly recommend closing that port and, if performing a remote backup, giving specific permission only to the remote machine.

AWS recommendations

We recommend implementing on-disk encryption; InfluxDB does not offer built-in support to encrypt the data.