Kerberos authentication:

-The Kerberos authentication protocol provides a mechanism for authentication — and mutual authentication — between a client and a server, or between one server and another server.

Enabling Kerberos Authentication while upgrading is possible in Pega, for that please find the below steps. This is only possible with script type of upgrade. this cannot be achieved in UI tool based upgrade.

Step 1: jdbc.custom.connection.properties=prop1=val1;prop2=val2;prop3=val3;
Step 2: Set up your database to enable Kerberos functionality. (may include additional JDBC driver config)
Step 3: Run the command line installation

Note: DB should be supporting Kerberos Authentication, if not necessary changes should be done from DB side.

Kerberos Authentication Benefits:

1. Delegated authentication.

2. Interoperability

3. More efficient authentication to servers.

4. Mutual authentication.

Most widely used to avoid email reply to Phishing attacks.