Secrets management is hugely important to the security of the software and services you develop and use. We’re going to dig into what secrets management is, why it’s important, where you need to use it, and how to make it effective and easy to deploy.
What is Secrets Management?
“Secrets,” in the context of networking, refers to sensitive data used for authentication and authorization. Included in the definition of “secrets management” are passwords, API keys, tokens, certificates, or SSH keys are all examples of “secrets.” Secrets management tools allow organizations to manage secrets in a secure manner as opposed to sharing passwords, using default passwords, writing down or typing out passwords, and other insecure password management practices. Versus poor secrets management methods of the past, modern secrets management solutions can create a central point of oversight, control, and maintenance.
Secrets for Humans and Non-human Entities
Secrets management tools control privileges for employees and non-human entities alike. Non-human entities in this context include systems/machines, automations, applications, AI agents, or assistants that need secure systems access for computing and general business purposes. Secrets management tools allow these entities to access different types of secrets efficiently and provide the access they need to complete tasks.
Why Secrets Management is Important
Secrets management helps security teams and operations teams do three things: Help secure data, applications, and infrastructure; boosts the organization’s operational efficiency; and allows the organization to meet regulatory compliance requirements for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and more.
Developers and Secrets Management
From a developer’s perspective, a strong secrets management process and tooling make developing and deploying software faster and more efficient. It also helps avoid some scary shortcuts developers have been known to take: hard-coding passwords into code, using multiple secrets repositories, or the use of default passwords. While services like secrets scanning can detect risky secrets, it’s always preferable to avoid potentially exposed secrets in the first place.
How Secrets Management Works
Secrets management centralizes the storage, provision, rotating, auditing, and overall management of secrets. Here are some of the key components.
- Storage
Secrets are stored centrally and encrypted at rest. While it’s possible (and sometimes practical) to encrypt them at the client end, this can create overheads for decryption and decentralize management, removing some of the benefits of centralized administration.
- Access Control
A good secrets management tool will enforce strict identity and access management for every entity using its secrets. As we’ll see later, if the organization manages secrets across multiple cloud providers or instances or in a hybrid environment, effectively and efficiently managing secrets can be tricky. As such, organizations must operate on a basis of zero-trust access controls in which least privilege is a prevailing mechanism for strong secrets management.
- Audit and monitoring
Understanding who or what is creating or accessing secrets is important. When different systems and environments follow different logging practices monitoring can be a major challenge.
- Automation
Automating the secrets handling is a must, simply because the number and frequency of requests are high, and delays will hinder application performance. With non-human entities involved and a limited environment to work with, a rules-based automated approach is simpler and far more effective.
Why Attackers Target Secrets
It’s worth noting that all the elements that make secrets management such a game changer for operational ease and efficiency also make secrets very attractive to cyber criminals. If criminals can access these secrets, they can potentially gain access to all kinds of services, systems, and data. Should a cyber criminal successfully compromise a secrets management platform, essentially the entirety of the organization’s systems and data are at risk.
Why Managing Secrets is Difficult
DevOps teams are in a rush
It’s a common cybersecurity saying: “Humans are the weakest link.” And while the saying might be a little harsh, the reality is that accidents happen — to everyone, including cybersecurity practitioners — because humans are fallible and can make mistakes when under pressure, are working against tight timelines, and are understaffed (among many other things). But when humans are in a hurry or cut corners, the risk of mistakes rises. Developers can and do what it takes to get the job done within a tight deadline and try to avoid delays and extra work. When under pressure, DevOps teams may hardcode passwords or use a new secrets management tool or shared spreadsheet because available tools don’t scale (or can’t scale fast enough), causing security mistakes that inadvertently expose secrets.
Complex Infrastructure
It’s common to see development projects in a hybrid workspace or spanning multiple cloud providers. It’s worth mentioning that secrets management in cloud environments and secrets management for on-premises environments may need to be handled differently.
In expansive, ephemeral computing environments, implementing and enforcing secrets protection via a secrets protection platform can be hugely helpful. Equally, if work has already started and cross-infrastructure secrets management was not a consideration from the beginning, then security, operations, and AppSec teams have to retrofit secrets management products platforms that will facilitate a DevSecOps approach in the future.
Existing Secrets Management Can’t Scale
When all things are working well, organizations and projects may grow to a point where existing secrets management tools can’t keep up. Four variables potentially impact the suitability of a secrets management product:
- The complexity of the environment
- The number of entities that need access
- The volume of access requests
- The number (or number of types) of secrets
Other limitations exist, of course, but any growing organization or growing project needs to factor in increased demands on its infrastructure.
Consider also the entire process of managing secrets for a project, a department, or an entire enterprise. An enterprise-wide secrets management solution may be a good fit for some — and save a bit of cash and a lot of interoperability nightmares in the process. However, it may not be flexible enough for everyone’s needs.
Secrets Lifecycle Management is Tricky
Revoking, retiring, and rotating secrets can be a complex task. Keeping track of the different apps and entities that need access (and, more importantly, those that should no longer have access) is a job in itself. But rotating or renewing passwords or keys is also a task that can be quite complex — and frankly, a job that is easily automated by a secrets management tools. If secrets aren’t refreshed and retired often enough, the risk of leaked secrets is higher than it needs to be.
On the other hand, overly stringent access controls can lock out legitimate users. Striking a balance, and understanding the request frequency, is critical.
Users and Entities are Different Beasts
Bear in mind, too, that applications and entities behave differently from human users. If a secrets management platform can’t deliver a high volume of secrets to applications or entities, then the platform can impact performance. Conversely, human users will need to access credentials during incidents, as well as during their day-to-day work. Ensuring entities and humans have appropriate access in an emergency will make the difference between a successful incident response and a lengthy, costly, incident recovery.
What to Look For in Top Secrets Management Tools
At a minimum good secrets management tools make use of strong encryption, complete with audit logging and role-based access. The ability to dynamically and automatically configure, modify, and revoke permissions and access is absolutely mandatory. A top secrets management tool should include secrets management auditing, secrets management access controls, secrets management rotation, secrets management encryptions, and secrets management policies that can be tuned for the specific organization.
Secrets Management and CI/CD
Integration with your CI/CD pipeline and working practices is necessary when dealing with secrets management for applications. If this can’t be executed with the minimum of fuss and trouble, then people will attempt workarounds. The same goes for DevOps.
Usability
If a tool is too kludgy or unreliable, users will try to bypass or replace it. Non-human entities will stop working well. In both cases, a secretes management tool absolutely must do the job — and do so in a fashion that encourages adoption and use.
Top Five Secrets Management Best Practices
Secrets management tooling and solutions should include the following five attributes:
- Automation for:
- secrets detection
- identification of secrets sprawl and secrets leakage
- regular secrets rotation
- other secrets management risks
- Centralized and unified management capabilities
- Strong encryption
- A zero-trust architecture, requiring least-privilege access
- The ability to regularly audit secrets and check them against company policy
OX Security provides effective secrets management with the OX ASPM Platform. Unlike standalone secrets management solutions like HashiCorp Vault, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Secrets Management, Azure Key Vault, or Google Cloud Secret Management, the OX Platform is built to ensure that a strong secrets management strategy is part of a much larger security strategy that includes secrets management for applications and for the entire software development lifecycle.
Find out more about OX’s secrets management capabilities! Try OX for free.
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