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title: "Basic Authentication: Simple Policy"
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# Basic Authentication: Simple Policy

> For the full documentation index, see: https://docs.mulesoft.com/llms.txt

<table><colgroup><col> <col></colgroup><tbody><tr><td><p><strong>Policy Name</strong></p></td><td><p>Basic Authentication: Simple</p></td></tr><tr><td><p><strong>Summary</strong></p></td><td><p>Allows access based on the basic authorization mechanism, with a single user-password</p></td></tr><tr><td><p><strong>Category</strong></p></td><td><p>Security</p></td></tr><tr><td><p><strong>First Mule version available</strong></p></td><td><p>v4.0.0</p></td></tr><tr><td><p><strong>Returned Status Codes</strong></p></td><td><p>400 - Unauthorized or invalid client application credentials in WSDL API using SOAP 1.2</p></td></tr><tr><td></td><td><p>401 - Unauthorized or invalid client application credentials in HTTP or RAML APIs</p></td></tr><tr><td></td><td><p>500 - Unauthorized or invalid client application credentials in WSDL API using SOAP 1.1</p></td></tr></tbody></table>

## Summary

The Basic Authentication: Simple policy protects an API by forcing applications to provide a
username and password when making requests.

The policy follows
[basic HTTP authentication standards](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7617).

When an error is encountered, the policy returns an "WWW-Authenticate" HTTP header field.

## Configuring Policy Parameters

### Mule Gateway

When you apply the Basic Authentication: Simple policy to an API, a request to that API must contain
the following header:

Authorization: Basic <username:password>

The `username:password` value must be a base64-encoded string. For example on a Mac OS X or Linux
system, the username and password requirement is implemented as:

`echo -n '<Client Id>:<Client Secret>' | base64`