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Best practices for secrets management in Key Vault

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Summary

This article discusses best practices for secrets management in Azure Key Vault. It covers topics such as storing credentials, secrets rotation, access and network isolation, service limits and caching, monitoring, and backup and purge protection. It provides guidance on how to store credentials and sensitive information, how to rotate secrets, how to configure access and network security, how to handle throttling limits, and how to monitor and backup secrets.

Q&As

What are the best practices for securely storing service or application credentials in Key Vault?
The best practices for securely storing service or application credentials in Key Vault are to store credential information required to access database or service in secret value, store other information required for management in tags, and rotate secrets at least every 60 days.

How can secrets rotation be implemented to reduce the risk of exposure?
Secrets rotation can be implemented by storing secrets in application memory as environment variables or configuration settings for the entire application lifecycle, and rotating them often, at least every 60 days.

What measures should be taken to control access to secrets in Key Vault?
To control access to secrets in Key Vault, configure the firewall to only allow applications and related services to access secrets in the vault, use least privileged access by only having access to read secrets, and use access policies or Azure role-based access control.

How can Key Vault manage service limits and caching?
Key Vault can manage service limits and caching by caching secrets in the application for at least eight hours and implementing exponential back-off retry logic to handle scenarios when service limits are exceeded.

What are the options for monitoring, backup, and purge protection for secrets in Key Vault?
The options for monitoring, backup, and purge protection for secrets in Key Vault are to turn on Key Vault logging, use Azure Monitor to monitor all secrets activities in all vaults in one place, use Azure Event Grid to monitor the lifecycle of secrets, turn on purge protection to guard against malicious or accidental deletion of the secrets, and backup secrets which can't be recreated from other sources.

AI Comments

👍 This article does a great job of providing comprehensive best practices for securely storing service or application credentials in Key Vault. It also covers topics like secrets rotation, access and network isolation, service limits and caching, monitoring, and backup and purge protection.

👎 The article does not provide any instructions on how to actually implement the best practices for Key Vault. It only provides an overview of the best practices, but does not explain the steps necessary to actually implement them.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about best practices for secrets management in Key Vault. It talks about different recommendations for storing credentials, secrets rotation, access and network isolation, service limits and caching, monitoring, and backup and purge protection.

Friend: Wow, that's really interesting. It seems like it's really important to have the right protocols in place to keep sensitive information secure.

Me: Absolutely. It's important to make sure you are following best practices to ensure the security of your data. It can also help reduce the risk of data breaches and other malicious activity.

Action items

Research and implement Azure Key Vault for secure storage of service or application credentials.
Configure firewall settings to limit access to secrets in the vault.
Implement secrets rotation process and set up monitoring and alerting for Azure Key Vault.

Technical terms

Azure Key Vault: A cloud-based service that allows users to securely store service or application credentials like passwords and access keys as secrets.
Secrets: Credential information required to access a database or service, such as passwords, connection strings, access keys, SSH keys, and other sensitive information.
Tags: Metadata associated with a secret, such as rotation configuration.
Secret Rotation: The process of regularly changing secrets to reduce the risk of exposure.
Access Policies: Rules that define which users or applications have access to a secret.
Azure Role-Based Access Control: A system that allows users to control access to Azure resources based on their assigned roles.
Throttling Limits: Limits placed on the number of requests that can be made to a service in a given period of time.
Azure Monitor: A service that allows users to monitor all secrets activities in all their vaults in one place.
Azure Event Grid: A service that allows users to monitor the lifecycle of secrets.
Purge Protection: A feature that prevents malicious or accidental deletion of secrets.
Backup Secrets: Copies of secrets that can be used to restore them in the event of loss or deletion.