Complex secrets management concepts in simple terms

So what are secrets anyway? You can think of secrets as the passkeys to get into any code, infrastructure, or data storage. Secrets can be anything used to access functions of and within your application. Common examples include API Keys, Tokens, and Database Credentials, which all come in many formats. These credentials act as a security feature since sensitive systems cannot be accessed without the correct secret. On the other hand, unsecured secrets are a huge vulnerability that can lead to costly data breaches if they’re exploited.

Secrets sprawl

One of the significant vulnerabilities of secrets is known as secrets sprawl. Sprawl occurs when secrets are stored, used, and accessed from various places. Each extra location in the sprawl becomes an additional vulnerability that can be exploited. With so many locations, access points, and use cases, the sprawl is impossible to track. Worse, as teams and platforms grow, so too will their sprawl.

Sprawl isn’t just dangerous - It’s also inefficient. Developers spend unnecessary hours tracking down secrets every week, time that could be spent improving features and meeting project deadlines. Due to the sheer inconvenience of working under extended Secrets Sprawl, developers resort to dangerous practices like sharing secrets in plaintext team messages to maintain development efficiency.

Secrets management

Secrets management is the practice of keeping secrets safe. This includes reducing secrets sprawl, but it also means, more generally, overseeing the creation, storage, rotation, and expiration of every secret the development team uses.

Proper secrets management isn't just about security, though. In fast-paced development environments, ease and efficiency of secrets access is just as important. Developers will fall back on older, less secure practices when their secrets management solutions fall short.

Single source of truth

The single source of truth is a centralized, secure location used to store secrets. Centralized storage significantly reduces secrets sprawl and its associated dangers, but that’s not all it does. The other primary feature of centralized storage is control over secrets. The Single Source of Truth allows your team to generate, store, and access secrets during development securely and standardize use procedures.

With a comprehensive secrets manager, these controls go beyond storage and access. Secrets can be rotated on set schedules or at any time rather than waiting to be manually updated. Automatic sync features mean all secrets are immediately updated across all development environments, so developers always use the right secret at the right time without sifting through sprawl for hours. These automatic rotations and syncing features can significantly reduce the time spent on secrets management compared to manually locating and updating secrets.

Secrets management integrations

Since secrets management covers the storage and injection of secrets, it directly influences the speed and efficiency of the workflow. Great secrets management solutions work alongside other development services to reduce any friction created from robust security practices and must also be rapidly configurable to meet dynamic team needs. Secrets managers use a host of integrations to achieve this balance of speed and safety.

These integrations include Software Development Kits (SDKs) so developers can securely inject secrets directly into their projects as needed, regardless of the development environment their team prefers.

Since developers regularly use their operating system’s Command Line Interface (CLI) to save time, streamline their workflow, and access third-party libraries, great secrets managers also integrate with the CLI to allow for secure and convenient injection.

On the management side, secrets managers incorporate multi-factor authentication and personnel management services through partnership with SAML or SCIM identity providers to ensure that every account seeking access to secure storage is used by the appropriate, authorized identity.

Principle of least privilege & least privileged access

The principle of least privilege is a systems-oriented design philosophy centered around minimizing the risk and damage of data breaches. Least privilege in this context refers to the amount of access to systems that a person or other system requires to perform a particular function. To stay aligned with the principle of least privilege, team members should only have access to the resources they need at any moment.

In the event of an accident, error, or breach, compromised credentials can only affect parts of the systems they have access to. If the principle of least privilege is established correctly and these permissions are minimized, then the amount of damage to the platform will be appropriately minimized. Otherwise, a single compromised account with excessive access could wreak havoc on large portions of a system.

The principle of least privilege also helps with breach discovery and recovery. Since compromised credentials can only access fewer, more specific areas of the platform, identifying where and how the breach occurred becomes easier.

Role-based access control

Role-based access control is a secrets management solution designed to achieve the principle of least privilege in small teams and at scale. Role-based access control is simple in concept: Access to various parts of the system is determined by the position an employee has in the project or company. For example, back-end engineers do not require permissions to update the company website.

RBAC is a solution that scales. Rather than manually updating permissions for every employee one at a time, secrets managers allow your management team to create roles and assign employees to those roles to rapidly update permissions across the organization and easily swap team members into and out of projects. This ability to rapidly update the structure of teams and attach or remove permissions accordingly is essential to a large team in a fast-paced development environment.

Comprehensive secrets management solutions should include fine-grained RBAC and customizable User Groups to help adhere to the principle of least privilege.

Choosing a secrets manager

Great secrets managers accomplish all of these things and more. Doppler’s single source of truth comes with a host of integrations to help secure your team’s development environment, with features like User Groups, role-based access control, comprehensive audit logs, and much more - all designed to improve your team’s security posture without compromising speed. Try a free demo to see if Doppler is the right fit for your team!