As data becomes a critical asset, governance, auditing, and access control are essential pillars of a secure and compliant data strategy. Apache Pulsar — a distributed messaging and event streaming platform — provides built-in tools and APIs that enable real-time data governance without sacrificing performance.

In this post, we’ll explore how Apache Pulsar can support data governance goals, including real-time auditing, access enforcement, and regulatory compliance, across distributed and multi-tenant data environments.

Why Data Governance Matters in Event Streaming

Key drivers for implementing governance in messaging systems:

  • Compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and CCPA
  • Auditability for who accessed or published data and when
  • Access control across teams, tenants, and workloads
  • Data integrity and lineage tracking
  • Secure multitenancy and isolation

Apache Pulsar addresses these challenges with native support for multi-tenancy, role-based access control (RBAC), and audit event logging.

Pulsar’s Built-In Governance Features

Feature Description
Namespaces & Tenants Logical isolation for multitenancy with quotas and policies
RBAC Authorization Role-based access to topics, namespaces, and operations
Authentication Support for TLS, JWT, OAuth2 for verified identities
Audit Logs Broker logs and admin APIs track user activity
Resource Policies Quotas and retention at the namespace level

Implementing Access Control with RBAC

Enable authorization in broker.conf:

authorizationEnabled=true
authorizationProvider=org.apache.pulsar.broker.authorization.PulsarAuthorizationProvider

Grant permissions per role:

bin/pulsar-admin namespaces grant-permission \
--role finance-producer \
--actions produce \
finance-tenant/transactions

bin/pulsar-admin namespaces grant-permission \
--role analytics-consumer \
--actions consume \
finance-tenant/transactions

Define policies for:

  • Produce / Consume actions
  • Topic creation / deletion
  • Function execution
  • Schema management

Real-Time Auditing with Broker Logs and APIs

All Pulsar operations are logged via:

  • Broker logs (authentication events, topic access)
  • Admin API calls (create topic, grant role, etc.)
  • Function logs (data transformation and egress)

Sample log (with TLS auth):

[INFO] Authenticated user: CN=client,OU=team,O=org
[INFO] Producing to topic: persistent://finance-tenant/transactions/payments
[INFO] Action: grant-permission, role: analytics-consumer

Logs can be shipped to SIEM platforms like:

  • Splunk
  • Elastic Stack
  • AWS CloudWatch
  • Azure Monitor

Use logs to:

  • Trace access patterns
  • Detect anomalies
  • Support forensic investigations

Integrating with Identity Providers

For large organizations, integrate Pulsar with centralized IAM systems:

  • JWT Tokens signed by trusted identity providers
  • OAuth2/OIDC for enterprise-grade auth flows
  • Custom authentication plugins for LDAP, Kerberos, etc.

Example: JWT-based authentication

authenticationEnabled=true
authenticationProviders=org.apache.pulsar.broker.authentication.AuthenticationProviderToken
tokenPublicKey=file:///etc/pulsar/pub.key

Managing Resource Policies and Quotas

To prevent overuse or abuse:

  • Apply publish and consume rate limits
  • Set message retention for compliance
  • Define storage quotas per namespace
bin/pulsar-admin namespaces set-retention finance-tenant/transactions \
--size 10G --time 3d

bin/pulsar-admin namespaces set-subscription-dispatch-rate \
--msg-rate 1000 \
finance-tenant/transactions

Monitoring Governance with Pulsar Metrics

Use built-in Prometheus exporters to track governance-relevant metrics:

  • pulsar_authorization_success_total
  • pulsar_authorization_failure_total
  • pulsar_authentication_failure_total
  • pulsar_producer_creation_rate
  • pulsar_consumer_close_rate

Dashboards can visualize access trends and detect unauthorized usage.

Best Practices for Data Governance in Pulsar

  • Use Key_Shared subscriptions to maintain key-level audit trails
  • Encrypt topics using TLS and store keys securely
  • Rotate access tokens and certificates periodically
  • Enforce schema validation to protect data contracts
  • Integrate audit logs with enterprise monitoring tools
  • Regularly review permissions and access roles

Use Cases

  • Financial services: Monitor who accessed payment transaction topics
  • Healthcare: Restrict data access to authorized medical systems
  • IoT: Prevent device impersonation using signed tokens
  • SaaS platforms: Enforce per-tenant isolation and audit access

Conclusion

Apache Pulsar provides a solid foundation for real-time data governance, with out-of-the-box features for auditing, access control, and multi-tenancy. Whether you’re operating in a regulated industry or simply want to enforce internal data policies, Pulsar enables secure, scalable, and compliant event streaming.

By combining authentication, RBAC, logging, and monitoring, Pulsar becomes more than a messaging platform — it becomes a key part of your governance and security strategy.