AWS Secrets Manager is a powerful service that helps organizations securely store, manage, and retrieve credentials, API keys, tokens, and other secrets. As cyber threats continue to evolve, protecting sensitive data has become more critical than ever.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore what Secrets Manager is, its key capabilities, use cases, pricing, and more to help you make the most of this service. Let‘s get started!
What Exactly is AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager is a fully managed service that enables you to securely encrypt, store, and manage secrets throughout their lifecycle. The service handles key management, data encryption, permissions management, and secret rotation without you having to write custom code.
Secrets here refer to any sensitive data like passwords, API keys, tokens, database credentials, and other confidential information that applications, services, resources, and IT systems require to access your infrastructure or external services.
With Secrets Manager, you don’t need to hardcode credentials in your apps anymore. You can store secrets centrally and retrieve them dynamically at runtime whenever needed. This reduces security risks significantly.
Key Capabilities and Benefits
Here are some of the most notable capabilities of Secrets Manager:
Easy Secret Storage and Management
You can easily create, modify, retrieve, and delete secrets via the console, CLI, or SDK without writing custom scripts. The service handles encryption automatically using KMS keys.
Advanced Security and Access Controls
Secrets Manager leverages IAM, resource-based policies, and envelope encryption powered by KMS to control access. You can enable MFA for additional security.
Seamless Secret Rotation
Set automated rotation schedules to rotate secrets on-demand or on a regular cadence. This ensures secrets expire after some time.
Secret Replication Across Regions
Easily replicate secrets across regions to enable failover and resilience against disasters.
Native Service Integrations
Natively integrate with RDS, Redshift, DocumentDB and other AWS services to rotate credentials.
Centralized Monitoring
Centrally monitor access attempts, secret rotations, and other events via CloudTrail and CloudWatch.
Higher Compliance
Comply with regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2 by managing and monitoring secrets effectively.
With all these capabilities, Secrets Manager helps enhance security, reduce risks, gain controls, and simplify secret management at scale, all with just a few clicks.
Common Use Cases and Integration Scenarios
Here are some popular ways organizations use Secrets Manager:
Securely Store Database Credentials
Safely store RDS, Aurora, Redshift, and DocumentDB credentials in Secrets Manager instead of hardcoding them. Retrieve them at runtime via API calls. This reduces breach risks.
Manage API Keys and Tokens
Store and rotate API keys, OAuth tokens, and other secrets needed to access SaaS apps and platform services. Removing hardcoded secrets from code makes apps more secure.
Enable CI/CD Pipelines Securely
Retrieve secrets dynamically in CI/CD pipelines running on services like CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline to access other resources.
Secure Containerized Workloads
Inject secrets from Secrets Manager into Docker containers via integrations like AWS App Runner or Amazon ECS to enable secure deployments.
Streamline Serverless Applications
Architect serverless apps to fetch secrets on demand from Secrets Manager instead of storing them with Lambda functions or application code.
Control Access to Data Lakes
Manage keys and tokens needed to access data lakes running on services like Amazon S3, Amazon EMR, and AWS Glue.
Support Secrets for Custom Apps
Build custom applications like internal admin panels, billing systems, etc. to retrieve secrets at runtime from Secrets Manager via API calls.
As you can see, Secrets Manager helps protect secrets across a wide variety of AWS workloads and architectures.
How Secrets Manager Works
Under the hood, Secrets Manager uses envelope encryption powered by AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to encrypt and decrypt secrets.
When you store a secret, Secrets Manager encrypts it with a unique data key which is further encrypted by a master key in KMS. The encrypted secret is then stored in the Secrets Manager datastore.
To decrypt and retrieve the secret programmatically, your app must call the Secrets Manager GetSecretValue API by passing valid credentials and permissions. Secrets Manager first verifies IAM permissions, gets the encrypted secret blob, has KMS decrypt the data key, and lastly decrypts the secret before returning it.
This envelope encryption scheme ensures the secret remains fully encrypted at rest while allowing authorized services and users to decrypt it at runtime.
How Much Does Secrets Manager Cost?
Secrets Manager follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of secrets stored and accessed per month. Here is an overview:
- $0.40 per secret per month
- $0.05 per 10,000 API calls
- $0.03 per 10,000 automation API calls
You only pay for what you use. There are no upfront commitments. API calls for secret rotation and management are free in basic tiers.
Advanced tiers with RDS and other integrations have additional charges. You also pay for using non-default KMS keys, CloudTrail logging, and CloudWatch metric usage as per standard rates.
Overall, costs range from a few dollars for small workloads to a few hundred dollars for enterprise-scale production workloads managing hundreds of thousands of secrets.
Getting Started with Secrets Manager
Getting started with AWS Secrets Manager only takes a few steps:
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Sign-up for an AWS account if you don‘t have one already.
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Log into the AWS management console and navigate to Secrets Manager.
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Store a new secret via the console, CLI or SDK by providing a name, description, secret value and tags.
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Retrieve the secret programmatically via API calls by passing valid IAM credentials and permissions.
And that‘s all you need to begin securely storing and managing your secrets!
You can then build upon this foundation by configuring rotation, replication, notifications, auditing, and other advanced capabilities.
Innovative Ways Brands are Using Secrets Manager
Here are some innovative examples of global brands leveraging Secrets Manager to secure their stacks:
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Netflix relies on Secrets Manager to manage credentials and keys for critical workloads running across multiple regions and accounts.
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Samsung uses Secrets Manager to control access and rotate keys required by various microservices within their cloud-native applications.
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Fender has set up automated secret rotation using Secrets Manager to ensure credentials expire within 90 days across various environments.
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Expedia leverages Secrets Manager to store API tokens needed by their CI/CD pipelines to access dependent services.
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Overstock integrates Secrets Manager with Amazon RDS to enable dynamic database credential injection across their estate.
Key Alternatives to Secrets Manager
Here are some alternative services that have similar capabilities:
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AWS Parameter Store – Store simple configuration data like passwords, license keys, feature flags etc. Lacks native rotation and advanced security controls.
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HashiCorp Vault – Self-managed secrets management for hybrid environments. Requires infrastructure management expertise.
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Azure Key Vault – Fully managed secrets management service on Azure. Lacks tight AWS integrations.
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Conjur – Open-source secrets management solution. Involves ops overhead for management.
While these alternatives have merits, Secrets Manager makes secrets management incredibly simple for AWS-centric organizations with its tight native integrations, managed service experience, and easy rotational capabilities.
Final Thoughts
Managing and protecting secrets is fundamental to application security and cloud architecture designs. AWS Secrets Manager makes the process incredibly seamless across AWS environments.
With just a few clicks, you can setup secrets rotation, replication, auditing, and fine-grained access policies to control credentials and keys needed by various workloads and services. This brings tremendous ease-of-use alongside robust encryption and security capabilities tailored for the cloud.
As you modernize legacy apps or build cloud-native applications, be sure to centralize secrets management with AWS Secrets Manager following the best practices outlined in this guide. This will help you accelerate development, strengthen security, achieve compliance, and sleep better by keeping your keys safe!
