Overview of Secret Management
The standard for container orchestration now is Kubernetes. Many existing workloads are still running on virtual machines in the public cloud or private data centers, with organizations slowly adopting a container-first development structure. Most businesses are now facing migration to Kubernetes from their previous methods.
Kubernetes migration affects the entire release process, including monitoring, logging, CI / CD, and security. Security can be controlled at both cluster level and application level as well. In this article, we'll try to gain more insight into how we, within Kubernetes, can effectively manage secrets. In Kubernetes, a hidden object maintains sensitive information such as API activation keys, OAuth tokens, and database passwords.
You might want to store all your environment-specific secrets in a single place if you run different Kubernetes clusters for different environments. Then, make sure your organization has a secret management tool that can smartly identify the environment the pod is deployed in and fetch secrets accordingly. A vault is a tool providing a solution for securely accessing secrets, offering enterprise requirements like
- Single source of secrets
- Programmatic application access
- Operator access
- Practical security
- Modern DataCenter friendly
How does Vault work ?
The suggested installation method is via the new Vault Helm Chart, which now supports the functionality of vault-k8s injection. The diagram below shows how a Kubernetes API request is made using the vault-k8s webhook to intercept and modify the pod configurations.How do you integrate Vault for multi-cloud ?
HashiCorp's Vault allows teams to securely store and tightly control access to encryption keys, certificates, passwords, and tokens to protect sensitive information. Vault will enable teams to manage and securely store secrets across multiple clouds centrally and on-premises infrastructure using a single system, ensuring reliable protection through a single workflow.
The Vault API exposes cryptographic operations for developers to secure the sensitive information/data without making encryption HashiCorp's Vault allows teams to store securely and tightly control access to encryption keys, certificates, passwords and tokens for protecting confidential information.
Vault enables teams to manage and securely store secrets across multiple clouds centrally and on-premises infrastructure using a single system, ensuring reliable protection through a single workflow The Vault API exposes cryptographic operations for developers to secure sensitive information/data without making encryption keys get revealed.
Vault also can behave as a certificate authority (CA), to provide dynamic short-lived certificates to secure communications with SSL/TLS. Moreover, Vault enables brokering identities across different platforms, such as AWS IAM, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol ), and Active Directory, into unified identities, allowing applications to work across platform boundaries without encryption keys getting revealed.
Vault can also be a certificate authority (CA) to provide dynamic short-lived certificates to secure communications with SSL/TLS. Moreover, Vault enables brokering identities across different platforms, such as AWS IAM, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol ), and Active Directory, into unified identities, allowing applications to work across platform boundaries.
Amazon EKS is a reliable and efficient solution for managing Kubernetes clusters in the cloud. It provides the necessary tools and features to streamline the deployment and management process for organizations migrating their workloads to Kubernetes.
Limitations of using Vault
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Vault provides an authentication mechanism for Kubernetes to authenticate the clients using a Service Account Token. But, the client is still responsible for managing the token's life cycle. The next challenge, therefore, is to manage the token lifecycle in a standardized manner without the need to write custom logic.
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Sometimes, Vault adds chicken-and-egg problems like situations. For a service to read from the vault, a secret key for that service is required, and every time creating a new vault secret for a newly born service, a Kubernetes secret is required. This way, things may become more Complex.
Final Thoughts
Most companies have an IT Architecture that includes multiple data centers. Vault offers critical services in identity management, secret protection, regulation, and compliance. Such technology is intended to be widely accessible and scaled up as the number of clients and their technical requirements increase; at the same time, operators would like to guarantee that a definitive collection of policies is applied internationally.
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