Description:

Encryption of traffic between cluster worker nodes in Azure Databricks ensures that all data in transit between nodes within a cluster is securely encrypted. This protects sensitive information and communications from being intercepted or tampered with during processing, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring compliance with security policies.

Rationale:

By enabling encryption between cluster worker nodes, you ensure that all internal communications within the Databricks cluster are protected. This is particularly important for organizations handling sensitive data or operating in regulated environments. It helps prevent unauthorized access and maintains the integrity of data exchanged between worker nodes in distributed computing tasks.

Impact:

Enabling encryption between cluster worker nodes ensures that internal communication is secured, preventing eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, or data tampering. However, this might introduce slight overhead in terms of processing resources due to the encryption and decryption operations. The impact on performance is typically minimal, but it should still be considered during configuration.

Default Value:

By default, traffic between cluster worker nodes in Azure Databricks is encrypted using TLS (Transport Layer Security). This encryption is automatic, but you can customize encryption settings based on organizational security requirements.

Pre-requisites:

  • Azure account with Azure Databricks workspace.

  • Azure Databricks cluster deployed and running.

  • The user must have Databricks Admin or appropriate privileges to modify cluster configurations.

Audit:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a Databricks Admin or user with the necessary permissions.

  2. Navigate to the Azure Databricks workspace and review the cluster configuration settings.

  3. Verify that TLS encryption is enabled for communication between cluster worker nodes by checking the relevant cluster configuration options.

Implementation Steps:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal with Databricks Admin or appropriate permissions.

  2. Navigate to the Azure Databricks workspace and go to Clusters.

  3. Create or modify a cluster:

    • Click on Create Cluster or select an existing cluster.

  4. Check the encryption settings:

    • In the Cluster Configuration page, ensure that TLS encryption is enabled for worker node communication.

    • TLS encryption should be enabled by default for all traffic between worker nodes. If there is an option for configuring custom encryption, select the relevant settings to enforce secure communications.

  5. Verify and save the configuration:

    • After configuring encryption, click on Confirm or Save to apply the settings.

  6. Test the cluster communication:

    • Once the cluster is running, you can validate that the traffic between worker nodes is encrypted by running network traffic monitoring tools or checking logs to ensure encrypted communication is being used.

Backout Plan:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a Databricks Admin or user with appropriate permissions.

  2. Navigate to the Databricks workspace and Clusters.

  3. Modify the cluster configuration:

    • Disable TLS encryption for worker node traffic (if this was manually configured).

  4. Revert the changes and save the configuration.

  5. Test the cluster communication to ensure the changes have been applied and the encryption is removed.

References: