We are pleased to announce the next release of our flagship enterprise offering, Kong Enterprise 1.5! This follow-up release adds additional stability and features on top of our last major release, [Kong Enterprise 1.3](https://konghq.com/products/kong-enterprise)Kong Enterprise 1.3, which we announced at [Kong Summit 2019](https://konghq.com/kong-summit)Kong Summit 2019.

Kong Enterprise 1.5 key features include OIDC improvements, and Kong Dev Portal Application Registration. There are also several smaller features and stability improvements packaged here. Lastly, this release includes substantial improvements to our [documentation](https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise)documentation, including a new getting started guide and a refreshed look!

## OpenID Connect Improvements

The OpenID Connect plugin bundled with Kong Enterprise 1.5 features several improvements and fixes. The biggest addition is support for assertions on client authentication. The plugin is now able to authenticate itself with the OpenID Connect Providers using client_secret_jwt and private_key_jwt authentication methods.

## Application Registration (Beta)

The ability for developers to create applications that package together a set of backend services is one of the most highly requested features we’ve received from our customers and users. In Kong Enterprise 1.5, we enable this through new features in Dev Portal and Kong Manager. The Dev Portal in Kong Enterprise 1.5 includes a new tab called “My Apps” that allows developers to create new applications (and credentials) and subscribe their applications to specific services/APIs. We also built a new “Portal Application Registration” plugin and added functionality in Kong Manager to provide API owners the ability to approve application access to underlying services.

Currently, we’ve designated this feature as beta. [This page](https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise/latest/introduction/key-concepts/#beta)This page explains the beta label, which is a delineation that we intend to use in a consistent manner moving forward. For beta features, we provide full support only in pre-production environments. In the next release of Kong Enterprise, we plan to make this feature supported in production. By that time, we also plan to have more enhancements and related functionality for this feature based on user feedback from this beta release.

Learn more about Application Registration [here](https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise/1.5.x/developer-portal/administration/applications)here.

## Other Improvements

Apart from the highlighted features mentioned above, this version of Kong Enterprise includes several smaller features, including full support for [storing sensitive data fields in an encrypted format at rest within the database](https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise/1.5.x/db-encryption)storing sensitive data fields in an encrypted format at rest within the database, sortable entity lists in Kong Manager, auto-detection of Apache Cassandra cluster topology without Kong restarts, a new `hostname` attribute for `upstreams`, IPv6 support for the IP Restriction plugin, and several other plugin improvements and bug fixes.

For a complete list of changes, please see the [Kong Enterprise 1.5 Changelog](https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise/changelog)Kong Enterprise 1.5 Changelog.