# Is it possible to setup kibana and multiple elastic nodes in a secure network without TLS, and use token authentication?

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** elastic-stack-security, docker
**Created:** [June 14, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998 "2023-06-14T16:12:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Wpq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3da27b/32.png) [@Wpq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Wpq)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/1 "2023-06-14T16:12:08Z")

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I have a dedicated docker engine for my ELK stack. It is composed of

- a `caddy` web server that
  - proxifies traffic to kibana and the elastic nodes
  - exposes a HTTPS endpoint for both services to the "external world"

My intent is to have non-TLS communication inside the docker network **and enable token authentication** to access the elastic nodes. The general schema is

![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/9/9/994af9acaafce5a391f362cf09f0cf696997ed95.png)

`caddy` will manage

- `https://kibana.example.com` which proxifies the request to the `kibana:5601` container
- `https://elastic.example.com:9200` which proxifies the request to a random `elasticXX:9200` node

`kibana` will be configured to hit `https://elastic.example.com:9200` for its data (in other words, the kibana container, when data is required, will go back to the external elastic endpoint, to be redirected in). An alternative would be to manually list the elastic nodes in its configuration and really on kibana's own round robin mechanisms.

This setup apparently cannot work (I was told) because **token authentication requires that both kibana and all the nodes to be configured natively with TLS**.

Is this true?

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### Author: ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2023, 10:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/2 "2023-06-14T22:20:08Z")

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It is, yes.

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### Author: ![Wpq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3da27b/32.png) [@Wpq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Wpq)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2023, 6:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/3 "2023-06-15T06:15:30Z")

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> [@warkolm](#):
>
> It is, yes.

Ah, crap 😐. Can the certificate be at least self-signed?

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### Author: ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2023, 7:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/4 "2023-06-15T07:23:30Z")

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Sure can be.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Wpq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3da27b/32.png) [@Wpq](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Wpq)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2023, 7:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/5 "2023-06-15T07:55:04Z")

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> [@warkolm](#):
>
> Sure can be.

Thanks. I've gone through the whole "Authentication" documentation but it was never clear which of the possible ones (Basic Authentication, PKI, ...) were dependant of which protocol.

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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2023, 7:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-setup-kibana-and-multiple-elastic-nodes-in-a-secure-network-without-tls-and-use-token-authentication/335998/6 "2023-07-13T07:55:18Z")

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