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Secrets Management

Schuyler Brown
Chairman of the Board
Last updated on: January 6, 2023

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What is Secrets Management?

Secrets management is a cybersecurity best practice for securing digital authentication credentials. It relies on various tools and methods to store, access, and manage these credentials, which include sensitive items such as:

  • Passwords
  • Tokens
  • Certificates
  • API keys
  • Encryption keys
  • SSH keys

It is critical to protect these credentials, or secrets, since they are what authenticates a human user, machine, or other non-human entity to access services and applications in an IT environment.

Secrets in today’s IT environment

Trends in modern IT, particularly DevOps, cloud, and microservices-based architectures, are increasing the number of secrets organizations have to guard–potentially running into the hundreds or thousands. A cyber attacker with access to a secret can gain access and permissions to resources belonging to the secret’s owner. With the initial breach, the attacker may be able to access additional secrets, quickly expanding the scope of the attack.

Securing secrets assigned to non-human accounts or entities can be particularly challenging. For example, certain containerized applications and DevOps automation processes, whether internally developed, commercial, or open-source, (Red Hat OpenShift, Pivotal, Ansible Playbooks, Puppet, etc.) have embedded credentials. They may use them to access protected resources such as databases or HTTPs services. These credentials are frequently insecurely stored or hard-coded in configuration files or code.

Secrets management practices

Secrets management addresses these and other issues by providing a centralized store for credentials and enforcing security policies for all credentials belonging to both human and non-human identities. Key tools and practices include:

  • Removal of hard-coded credentials from DevOps tools, internal applications, and scripts
  • Centralized storing and automated management of secrets
  • Rotation of secrets and credentials
  • Complete audit trails
  • Policy-based RBAC (role-based access control)
  • Enforcement of the principle of least privilege

An effective secrets management practice is essential to all organizations that use credentials to authenticate users and automatically grant machines or applications access to services, systems, or data in the IT environment.

Learn about how StrongDM Works With Your Secrets Manager


About the Author

, Chairman of the Board, began working with startups as one of the first employees at Cross Commerce Media. Since then, he has worked at the venture capital firms DFJ Gotham and High Peaks Venture Partners. He is also the host of Founders@Fail and author of Inc.com's "Failing Forward" column, where he interviews veteran entrepreneurs about the bumps, bruises, and reality of life in the startup trenches. His leadership philosophy: be humble enough to realize you don’t know everything and curious enough to want to learn more. He holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from Columbia University. To contact Schuyler, visit him on LinkedIn.

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