diff --git a/extras/kinesis-asl-assembly/pom.xml b/extras/kinesis-asl-assembly/pom.xml
index 99a43fefce159..6f1edb52db9d1 100644
--- a/extras/kinesis-asl-assembly/pom.xml
+++ b/extras/kinesis-asl-assembly/pom.xml
@@ -63,7 +63,12 @@
     <dependency>
       <groupId>com.google.protobuf</groupId>
       <artifactId>protobuf-java</artifactId>
-      <scope>provided</scope>
+      <version>2.6.1</version>
+      <!-- 
+         We are being explicit about version here and overriding the 
+         spark default of 2.5.0 because KCL appears to have introduced 
+         a dependency on protobuf 2.6.1 somewhere between KCL 1.4.0 and 1.6.1.
+       -->
     </dependency>
     <dependency>
       <groupId>com.sun.jersey</groupId>
@@ -142,6 +147,15 @@
             <include>*:*</include>
           </includes>
         </artifactSet>
+        <relocations>
+          <relocation>
+            <pattern>com.google.protobuf</pattern>
+            <shadedPattern>kinesis.protobuf</shadedPattern>
+            <includes>
+              <include>com.google.protobuf.**</include>
+            </includes>
+          </relocation>
+        </relocations>
         <filters>
           <filter>
             <artifact>*:*</artifact>
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index b1a5d28a7f91d..730b9990fa077 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@
     <avro.version>1.7.7</avro.version>
     <avro.mapred.classifier>hadoop2</avro.mapred.classifier>
     <jets3t.version>0.7.1</jets3t.version>
-    <aws.kinesis.client.version>1.4.0</aws.kinesis.client.version>
+    <aws.kinesis.client.version>1.6.2</aws.kinesis.client.version>
     <!-- the producer is used in tests -->
     <aws.kinesis.producer.version>0.10.1</aws.kinesis.producer.version>
     <!--  org.apache.httpcomponents/httpclient-->