🔐 Cassandra Administration – Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) & Security
20 questions · 15 min timer · Explanations included · Free
Cassandra ships wide open. Authentication is off, the default cassandra superuser exists with a known password, and nothing is encrypted. Every question here is about what you change before that cluster goes near production.
What this quiz covers
- Authentication — what
PasswordAuthenticatoractually switches on, and thecassandrasuperuser’s special behaviour - The
system_authkeyspace — why leaving it at the default replication is a genuine outage risk, and why NetworkTopologyStrategy matters here - Role hierarchies and least privilege — inheritance, and the pitfalls when roles nest
- Encryption — client-to-node and node-to-node, plus key rotation
- Cluster membership — stopping unauthorised nodes from joining
- JMX and audit logging — hardening the interface, and what audit logging costs in performance
- Multi-tenancy — keeping tenant data genuinely isolated
Common mistakes
- Leaving
system_authwith a replication factor of 1 — lose that node and nobody can authenticate - Enabling authentication but leaving the default superuser in place
- Encrypting client traffic and forgetting node-to-node, so replication still crosses the network in plaintext
Twenty questions below, each with an explanation.
