AWS Secrets Manager
How Does AWS Secrets Manager Keep My Secrets Secure?
AWS Secrets Manager encrypts at rest using encryption keys that we own and store in AWS Key Management Service (KMS). We can control access to the secret using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies. When we retrieve a secret, Secrets Manager decrypts the secret and transmits it securely over TLS to our local environment. By default, Secrets Manager does not write or cache the secret to persistent storage.
How Can My Application Use These Secrets?
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy permits our application to access specific secrets. Then, in the application source code, we can replace secrets in plain text with code to retrieve these secrets programmatically using the Secrets Manager APIs.
Why Should I Use AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager protects access to our applications, services, and IT resources, without the upfront investment and on-going maintenance costs of operating our own infrastructure.
What Happens When I Rotate My Secret?
When a secret is rotated, a new version of its value becomes available for use. You can choose to manually add a value or automatically generate one at regular intervals by enabling automatic rotation.
What Happens When My Secret Expires?
When the secret reaches its expiration date, it transitions to a Destroyed state. When the transition happens, the value that is associated with the secret is no longer recoverable. The transition to the Destroyed state can take up to a couple of minutes after the secret expires, or a lock that prevented expiration is removed.
What Is AWS Secrets Manager ?
AWS Secret Manager is a service that stores our sensitive information as keys and gets encrypted as part of a secret. We will fetch our secrets using code. In this article, we will describe what a Secret Manager is, how it works, and what are benefits and best practices of using Secret Manager are. We will also create sample secrets using the AWS console.