Authentication and authorization
Enterprise Edition

This page provides an overview of authentication and authorization in Neo4j.

Authentication

Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user. Neo4j has the following authentication (auth) providers that can perform user and role authentication:

Native auth provider

Neo4j provides a native auth provider that stores user and role information in the system database. The following parameters control this provider:

  • dbms.security.auth_enabled (Default: true) — Enable auth requirement to access Neo4j.

    If you need to disable authentication, make sure you block all network connections during the recovery phase so users can connect to Neo4j only via localhost. This is necessary if, for example, you need to recover an admin user password or assign a user to the admin role. For more information, see Password and user recovery.

  • dbms.security.auth_lock_time (Default: 5s) — The amount of time a user account is locked after a configured number of unsuccessful authentication attempts.

  • dbms.security.auth_max_failed_attempts (Default: 3) — The maximum number of unsuccessful authentication attempts before imposing a user lock for a configured amount of time.
    When triggered, Neo4j logs an error containing a timestamp and the message failed to log in: too many failed attempts in the security.log.

For the relevant Cypher commands, see Manage users syntax, Manage roles syntax, and Manage privileges syntax. Various scenarios that illustrate the use of the native auth provider are available in Fine-grained access control.

User auth providers

User auth providers allow you to link externally-defined users (e.g., in a third-party ID provider like OIDC or LDAP) to the Neo4j internal user model. For more information, see User auth providers.

LDAP auth provider

Controls authentication and authorization through external security software such as Active Directory or OpenLDAP, which is accessed via the built-in LDAP connector. A description of the LDAP plugin using Active Directory is available in Integration with LDAP directory services.

Single sign-on provider

Integration with a single sign-on service, such as Okta, Auth0, or Microsoft Entra ID to provide centralized authentication and authorization for all your systems. Neo4j supports the popular OpenID Connect mechanism for integrating with identity providers. The configuration steps are described in Single sign-on integration.

Custom-built plugin auth providers

A plugin option for building custom integrations. It is recommended that this option is used as part of a custom delivery as negotiated with Neo4j Professional Services. For more information, see Java Reference → Authentication and authorization plugins.

Kerberos authentication and single sign-on

In addition to LDAP, native, and custom providers, Neo4j supports Kerberos for authentication and single sign-on. Kerberos support is provided via the Neo4j Kerberos Add-On.

Mixed-mode authentication

Neo4j also supports mixed-mode authentication that allows you to use multiple authentication providers in your database setup. For more information and examples, see Set Neo4j to use LDAP and Configure Neo4j to use OpenID Connect.

Authorization

Authorization is the process of determining whether a user is allowed to perform a specific action. Authorization is managed using role-based access control (RBAC). RBAC is a method of restricting access to authorized users. It is a way of assigning privileges to roles that are then assigned to users. This simplifies user management, as permissions are assigned to roles rather than to individual users. The roles are defined in terms of their underlying privileges, and they can be modified by adding or removing these access rights using the Cypher commands described in this chapter.

Neo4j provides a set of built-in roles and also allows you to create custom roles with specific privileges. You can also use the sub-graph access control, through which read access to the graph can be limited to specific combinations of labels, relationship types, and properties.

The functionality described in these pages applies to Enterprise Edition. A limited set of user management functions are also available in Community Edition. Built-in roles capabilities gives a quick overview of these.

The Neo4j security model is stored in the system graph, which is maintained in the system database. All administrative commands need to be executed against it. When connected to the DBMS over Configure network connectors, administrative commands are automatically routed to the system database.

Terminology

The following terms are relevant to role-based access control within Neo4j:

active user

A user who is active within the system and can perform actions prescribed by any assigned roles on the data. This is in contrast to a suspended user.

administrator

This is a user who has been assigned the admin role.

auth provider

Properties attached to a user which define which authentication and authorization config to use for that user.

authentication

The process of verifying the identity of a user, typically using credentials like a username and password or a cryptographic token like a JWT.

authorization

The process of determining a user’s access rights and privileges within Neo4j, based on their verified identity.

current user

This is the currently logged-in user invoking the commands.

password policy

The password policy is a set of rules about what makes up a valid password. For Neo4j, the following rules apply:

  • The password cannot be an empty string.

  • When changing passwords, the new password cannot be the same as the previous password.

  • The password must be at least 8 characters long.

role

A collection of privileges that enables users to perform specific actions on the data. A user can have multiple roles.

suspended user

A user who has been suspended is not able to access the database in any capacity, regardless of any assigned roles.

user

  • A user is composed of a username and credentials, where the latter is a unit of information, such as a password, verifying the identity of a user.

  • A user may represent a human, an application, etc.

Glossary

allocator

A component in the cluster that allocates databases to servers according to the topology constraints specified and an allocation strategy.

asynchronous replication

Asynchronous replication is used by secondary copies to poll for new transactions, which means they cannot be guaranteed to have received the most recent transactions. This enables efficient scale-out of read-performance.

Aura instance

A fully-managed DBMS represented by a single instance ID, that is running in the Neo4j Aura cloud.

auto-commit transaction

An automatically committed transaction that contains a single query.

Bolt protocol

Bolt is a protocol used for interaction between Neo4j instances and drivers.

bookmark

A marker the client can request from the cluster to ensure that it is able to read its own writes so that the application’s state is consistent and only databases that have a copy of the bookmark are permitted to respond.

category (Bloom)

A category is based on a node label and is defined in a Perspective as a way of visually distinguishing nodes with the same label(s).

causal consistency

All servers in a cluster agree on the order in which transactions take place. The position of a server on the causal chain can be guaranteed using a bookmark.

cluster

A Neo4j DBMS that spans multiple servers working together to increase fault tolerance and/or read scalability. Databases on a cluster may be configured to replicate across servers in the cluster thus achieving read scalability or high availability.

client application

Software that interacts with a Neo4j server.

commit

A commit is the successful completion of a transaction, which ensures durability of any changes made. For more details, visit Operations Manual → Transaction management.

composite database

Composite databases are the means to access partitioned graph data with a single Cypher query.

constraint

Constraints are sets of data modeling rules that ensure the data is consistent and reliable.

Cypher®

Neo4j’s graph query language.

data model

A data model defines how information is organized in a database. A good data model will make querying and understanding your data easier. In Neo4j, the data models have a graph structure.

database

A database is a container used by the DBMS to manage and store graph data. The physical structure of data is controlled by the database.

database vs graph

Databases are the physical containers of graph data. Graphs are the logical structure of data in Neo4j.

Database Management System

Database Management System, or DBMS, capable of managing multiple databases. A DBMS may run on a single server, or span several servers configured as a cluster.

database schema

The prescribed property existence and datatypes for nodes and relationships.

deallocate

An act of removing a database from a server or a server from a cluster without loss of data or reduced fault tolerance.

degree (of a node)

The number of relationships of a specific node; loops are counted twice.

disaster recovery

A manual intervention to restore availability of a cluster, or databases within a cluster.

driver

A software library that provides access to Neo4j from a particular programming language.

election

In the event that the Raft leader becomes unresponsive, followers automatically trigger an election and vote for a new leader.

entity

A node or a relationship.

expression (Cypher)

A component of a Cypher query which produces values. It may be used in projections, as a predicate, or when setting properties on graph elements.

fabric

Fabric is the architectural design of a unified system that provides a single access point to local or distributed graph data.

fault tolerance

A guarantee that a cluster can maintain a database’s persistence and availability in the event of one or more servers failing.

follower

A primary copy of a database acting as a follower, receives and acknowledges synchronous writes from the leader.

Generative AI (GenAI)

A type of artificial intelligence (AI) system that generates text, images, or other media in response to prompts.

graph

A logical representation of a set of nodes where some pairs are connected by relationships.

index

Data structure that improves read performance of a database.

knowledge graph

A specific type of graph that has an organizing principle so that a user (or a computer system) can reason about the underlying data. The organizing principle provides an additional layer of structure that adds context to support knowledge discovery.

label

Marks a node as a member of a named and indexed subset. A node may be assigned zero or more labels.

leader

A single primary copy of a database is designated as the leader. It receives all write transactions from clients and replicates writes synchronously to followers and asynchronously to secondary copies of the database.

main database

In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database(s) containing the user’s data. Can exist in the same Neo4j deployment as the tool asset database.

motif

A description of a specific pattern within a graph.

node

A node represents an entity or discrete object in your graph data model. Nodes can be connected by relationships, hold data in properties, and are classified by labels.

operator

A symbol representing a mathematical or logical operation.

parameter

Named value provided when running a Cypher statement.

path

A sequence of nodes and the relationships connecting them, that does not contain duplicate relationships. Several paths can match a pattern.

pattern

A specific arrangement of nodes and relationships that can be matched in a graph. A pattern follows a motif.

perspective (Bloom)

A Perspective defines a certain business view or domain that can be found in the target Neo4j graph. A single Neo4j graph can be viewed through different Perspectives, each tailored for a different business purpose.

primary

A copy of the database that is able to process write transactions and is eligible to be elected as a leader. It participates in fault tolerant writes as it is part of the majority required to acknowledge and commit write transactions.

primary vs secondary

In a cluster, databases can operate in either primary or secondary mode. Primary databases are able to process write and read transactions, ensuring fault tolerance. Secondary databases are replicated asynchronously from primaries, and their main purpose is to provide read scaling within the cluster.

project (Aura)

An isolated environment in the unified Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Preceded by tenant in the classic Aura console.

property

Properties are key-value pairs that are used for storing data on nodes and relationships.

query (Cypher)

A statement that retrieves or writes information to a database.

Raft group

A group of servers that are participating in hosting a particular database in primary mode.

Raft group member

A server that is participating in a Raft group. A server can be a member of one or more groups.

Raft log

A shared log between all Raft group members that is guaranteed to be consistently updated and viewed by those members. The log contains both database data and operational state of the Raft group.

Raft protocol

The networking mechanism that enables a database to replicate its data across multiple servers to give high availability for accessing the data and high durability to the data stored.

read scaling

Distributing query load by creating additional database copies hosted in secondary mode (read-only).

relationship

A relationship represents a connection between nodes in your graph data model. Relationships connect a source node to a target node, hold data in properties, and are classified by type.

secondary

An asynchronously replicated copy of the database that provides read scaling within the cluster.

seed

A seed is a database dump or a full backup used to create a database on a cluster. This is sometimes called seeding.

server

A physical machine, a virtual machine, or a container running an instance of Neo4j. Servers can be standalone or part of a cluster.

session

A causally linked sequence of transactions.

session consistency

An alternative name for Neo4j’s causal consistency.

standalone

A single server running Neo4j and not part of a cluster.

synchronous replication

Synchronous replication requires the leader primary to replicate a transaction and block the commit until a quorum of the follower primaries acknowledges that the transaction is successfully replicated. Once the transaction is replicated, the commit is allowed to proceed. This ensures data durability and consistency within the cluster.

system database

A database used by Neo4j to store system information.

tenant (Aura)

An isolated environment in the classic Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Replaced by project in the unified Aura console.

tool asset database

In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database where tools' assets are stored. This can be in the same Neo4j deployment as the main database(s) or in a separate deployment.

topology

A configuration that describes how the copies of a database should be spread across the servers in a cluster, see primary mode and secondary mode.

transaction

A transaction comprises a unit of work performed against a database. It is treated in a coherent and reliable way, independent of other transactions. Transactions comply with the ACID consistency model (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable).