Aiven Kafka now supports Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) as an additional authentication method between applications and the Aiven Kafka endpoint. This allows users to replace access keys and certificates with a username and password. The supported SASL mechanisms include SASL Plain and SCRAM. To enable SASL support, users need to configure their producers and consumers accordingly. With this update, Aiven Kafka now offers two options for connecting producers and consumers: Client Certificate or SASL.