Key pair authentication with DB Connect

[colbym]

Is there any way to authenticate DB Connect using key pair instead of user/password?  If not, any suggested workarounds anyone has found?

[colbym]

87 views of my question and zero comments. 

Same question posted by a different person 3 years ago and no answer to them either. 

It seems like no one responsible for this product actually looks at the questions. 

A reply that states "this is not possible or will never be implemented" is preferable to complete silence. 

Even better would be acknowledging the use case as valid and committing to adding the feature or providing a workaround such as code that could be inserted into the app configuration to enable it as a custom feature.

[PickleRick]

"It seems like no one responsible for this product actually looks at the questions". No, they might not. And there's a good reason for that - this is a community-driven forum. People who have spare time and are willing to help others lurk here and sometimes respond to the questions they know answers to.

Doesn't mean that:

1) Splunk employees, especially those you want, are active here

2) People who active questions here have knowledge about your particular problem.

People who have no idea what you're asking about typically don't respond because they don't want to create pointless noise.

If you want a binding response from Splunk itself, don't post questions on Answers, use an official channel - typically raise a support case or contact your sales contact (depending on the problem at hand).

[t183194]

I hear you! We have the same issue and  with Snowflake enforcing Keypair auth in Nov 2025 someone in Splunk really needs to help!

[colbym]

Check the #dbconnect Slack channel on Splunk Community.  I posted the way to do it on there.

[thahir]

Hi @t183194 @colbym ,

Splunk DB Connect does not natively support key pair authentication as an out-of-the-box option across all database types. However, certain databases like Snowflake offer specific workarounds, which you can refer to in the following article:

🔗 https://splunk.my.site.com/customer/s/article/Unable-to-save

DB Connect primarily relies on the JDBC drivers of the target databases. If a particular JDBC driver supports key pair (or certificate-based) authentication, it may be possible to enable it by configuring advanced connection parameters within DB Connect. This is often the case with databases like Snowflake.

For other databases, support for key pair authentication depends entirely on the capabilities of the respective JDBC driver, so it’s worth checking the official driver documentation.

If you’d like to share your suggestion or request this as a feature enhancement, you can submit it to Splunk via their Ideas Portal:

🔗 https://ideas.splunk.com/

To summarize, implementing key pair authentication is something that typically needs to be handled at the JDBC level, not directly through the DB Connect UI.

[colbym]

I figured this out eventually btw,  and have been using it successfully since Sep 2024.  I posted the tricks to make it work in the DB Connect Slack channel.  (#dbconnect) If anybody needs help and can't find that, hit me up @Colby Mahan on Splunk Community Slack channel.