Cloud SQL Auth Proxy demystified

While relational databases still offer basic authentication, many of our clients are realizing that this isn’t sufficient or secure enough in today’s complex cloud environments. Some of the commonly stated complaints are lack of two-factor authentication, easier susceptibility to leaked passwords, as well as missing credential rotation capabilities. In order to simplify and secure authorization and authentication into database instances, Google Cloud has developed IAM Database Authentication that supports basic and IAM authentication. Along with this capability, Google released Cloud SQL Auth Proxy to provide a secure path for clients to log into their database while eliminating other hurdles.