diff --git a/dspace-api/pom.xml b/dspace-api/pom.xml
index d784e24d15ee..1a42f80d7890 100644
--- a/dspace-api/pom.xml
+++ b/dspace-api/pom.xml
@@ -756,6 +756,11 @@
                     <groupId>org.javassist</groupId>
                     <artifactId>javassist</artifactId>
                 </exclusion>
+                <!-- Exclude snakeyaml as a newer version is brought in by Spring Boot -->
+                <exclusion>
+                    <groupId>org.yaml</groupId>
+                    <artifactId>snakeyaml</artifactId>
+                </exclusion>
             </exclusions>
         </dependency>
 
diff --git a/dspace-server-webapp/src/main/resources/application.properties b/dspace-server-webapp/src/main/resources/application.properties
index 8233298ef0b0..0d9b9cd836ec 100644
--- a/dspace-server-webapp/src/main/resources/application.properties
+++ b/dspace-server-webapp/src/main/resources/application.properties
@@ -135,3 +135,15 @@ spring.servlet.multipart.max-file-size = 512MB
 
 # Maximum size of a multipart request (i.e. max total size of all files in one request) (default = 10MB)
 spring.servlet.multipart.max-request-size = 512MB
+
+##################################
+# Spring Boot's HTTP Client configuration (for RestClient and RestTemplate)
+# https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/wiki/Spring-Boot-3.4-Release-Notes#restclient-and-resttemplate
+#
+# "simple" tells Spring Boot to use JDK's HttpURLConnection (SimpleClientHttpRequestFactory)
+# We have to configure this explicitly for DSpace because Spring Boot's autoconfiguration will attempt to
+# use Jetty or similar if found on the classpath (and Jetty is on the classpath for Handle Server, etc)
+spring.http.client.factory = simple
+# "dont_follow" tells Spring Boot not to follow any redirects itself, but instead return the 3xx code to
+# the user's browser.
+spring.http.client.redirects = dont_follow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 61a81ea41736..4d834b56ae59 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -19,9 +19,9 @@
     <properties>
         <!--=== GENERAL / DSPACE-API DEPENDENCIES ===-->
         <java.version>17</java.version>
-        <spring.version>6.2.0</spring.version>
-        <spring-boot.version>3.3.5</spring-boot.version>
-        <spring-security.version>6.4.0</spring-security.version> <!-- sync with version used by spring-boot-->
+        <spring.version>6.2.1</spring.version>
+        <spring-boot.version>3.4.1</spring-boot.version>
+        <spring-security.version>6.4.2</spring-security.version> <!-- sync with version used by spring-boot-->
         <hibernate.version>6.4.8.Final</hibernate.version>
         <hibernate-validator.version>8.0.1.Final</hibernate-validator.version>
         <postgresql.driver.version>42.7.5</postgresql.driver.version>