diff --git a/awx/main/management/commands/enable_local_authentication.py b/awx/main/management/commands/enable_local_authentication.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..a9db33709c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/awx/main/management/commands/enable_local_authentication.py
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand, CommandError
+from django.conf import settings
+
+
+class Command(BaseCommand):
+    """enable or disable authentication system"""
+
+    def add_arguments(self, parser):
+        """
+        This adds the --enable --disable functionalities to the command using mutally_exclusive to avoid situations in which users pass both flags
+        """
+        group = parser.add_mutually_exclusive_group()
+        group.add_argument('--enable', dest='enable', action='store_true', help='Pass --enable to enable local authentication')
+        group.add_argument('--disable', dest='disable', action='store_true', help='Pass --disable to disable local authentication')
+
+    def _enable_disable_auth(self, enable, disable):
+        """
+        this method allows the disabling or enabling of local authenication based on the argument passed into the parser
+        if no arguments throw a command error, if --enable set the DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH to False
+        if --disable it's set to True. Realizing that the flag is counterintuitive to what is expected.
+        """
+
+        if enable:
+            settings.DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH = False
+            print("Setting has changed to {} allowing local authentication".format(settings.DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH))
+
+        elif disable:
+            settings.DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH = True
+            print("Setting has changed to {} disallowing local authentication".format(settings.DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH))
+
+        else:
+            raise CommandError('Please pass --enable flag to allow local auth or --disable flag to disable local auth')
+
+    def handle(self, **options):
+        self._enable_disable_auth(options.get('enable'), options.get('disable'))