# Custom Http
With *custom authentication,* you can plug in your own authentication system by using HTTP headers.
In this approach, your own authentication proxy/code sitting in front of Lenses takes care of the authentication and injects appropriate Headers in all HTTP requests for verified users.
## Setup a custom authentication layer
Set up a custom authentication layer by introducing in `security.conf`:
```bash
# Full classpath of customer authentication plugin
lenses.security.plugin=com.mycompany.authentication.plugin.class.path
```
Lenses connects similarly to any other application to the infrastructure You can implement a plugin in a few hours in Java/Scala or other JVM technology by implementing one interface:
```bash
public interface HttpAuthenticationPlugin {
UserAndGroups authenticate(HttpRequest request);
}
```
The returned object **UserAndGroups** will contain the username and the groups a person authentication belongs to (*or raise an exception if no such user exists*).
## **Example**
The best way to get started is to look into a sample open-source implementation of such a plugin in [GitHub](https://github.com/lensesio/lenses-security-http-sample).
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