diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index dfc807cf3cf..1769f026dba 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -487,6 +487,9 @@ Release 2.8.0 - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-12209 Comparable type should be in FileStatus.
     (Yong Zhang via stevel)
 
+    HADOOP-12088. KMSClientProvider uses equalsIgnoreCase("application/json").
+    (Brahma Reddy Battula via stevel)
+
 Release 2.7.2 - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/crypto/key/kms/KMSClientProvider.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/crypto/key/kms/KMSClientProvider.java
index 149424fb87d..4698a83c926 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/crypto/key/kms/KMSClientProvider.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/crypto/key/kms/KMSClientProvider.java
@@ -544,7 +544,9 @@ public class KMSClientProvider extends KeyProvider implements CryptoExtension,
       // AuthenticatedURL properly to set authToken post initialization)
     }
     HttpExceptionUtils.validateResponse(conn, expectedResponse);
-    if (APPLICATION_JSON_MIME.equalsIgnoreCase(conn.getContentType())
+    if (conn.getContentType() != null
+        && conn.getContentType().trim().toLowerCase()
+            .startsWith(APPLICATION_JSON_MIME)
         && klass != null) {
       ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
       InputStream is = null;