Enterprise-Grade Kafka Integration for Event-Driven IAM

From user and org events to token activity streams, Keymate tightly integrates with Apache Kafka to deliver secure, observable, and policy-controlled event flows.

Secure Event Streaming and Policy-Aware Subscriptions

Why It Matters

In modern IAM architectures, Kafka is more than just plumbing—it's the real-time backbone of your enterprise. However, without identity context and authorization guardrails, Kafka streams can expose sensitive data or permit unauthorized consumption.

Keymate addresses this by:

Key Components:

Emitting structured IAM events to Kafka via outbox pattern

Enforcing policy-driven access to Kafka topics (Secure Stream Subscriptions)

Attaching user/session context to every emitted message

Supporting fine-grained subscription control via gRPC or REST

Policy-Driven IAM Event Streaming over Kafka

IAM lifecycle events (login, role assignment, org creation, delegation) are emitted to the outbox. Event Publisher microservice pushes these events to Integration Hub. Integration Hub forwards them to Kafka with full identity/session metadata. Subscriber Access Policies are enforced using Keymate's DSL or OpenFGA. Unauthorized or duplicate subscriptions are blocked via Subscription Lifecycle Manager.

IAM Event Streaming Flow

Use Cases Include:

Key Components:

Organization-aware event consumption

Role-based topic filtering

Enforcing tenant-level isolation in multi-tenant Kafka clusters

Real-time auditing of delegation or impersonation flows

Integration Highlights

Kafka Outbox Pattern Support

Decoupled, transactional event publishing using Postgres outbox tables

Integration Hub with Identity Tags

Events routed via gRPC with full user/session/org metadata attached

Subscription Lifecycle Management

Central CRUD interface for managing stream consumers

Secure Stream Subscriptions (NEW)

Enforce policies like "only auditors can consume org X's event stream"

Schema Registry Validation

Validate messages against JSON or Protobuf schemas before dispatch

OpenTelemetry Tracing

Trace the full lifecycle of an event—from trigger to Kafka write

Event Filtering SPI (Optional)

Per-tenant, per-role or per-event filtering before writing to Kafka

Frequently Asked Questions

Using an outbox pattern for consistency, events are written to a DB table within the Keycloak TX, then published via Integration Hub to Kafka.

Via the Secure Stream Subscriptions system and the Subscription Lifecycle Manager, which support DSL-based or OpenFGA-based rules.

All messages include actor ID, tenant, delegation state, org/unit, IP, and optionally risk score or department.

Yes. Topics can be tenant-scoped, and policies enforce access per tenant/session context.

Yes. The subscription authorization layer sits independently and works regardless of Kafka vendor.

How to Enable Kafka Integration

Follow these steps to enable:

Enable Keymate's Kafka Event Publisher extension

Deploy the Integration Hub to handle outbox → Kafka delivery

Configure schemas in Schema Registry (JSON or Protobuf)

Enable Subscription Lifecycle Manager for consumer authorization

Write and test Secure Stream Subscription policies

ELEVATE YOUR IAM STRATEGY

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