AWS Secrets Manager vs. HashiCorp Vault

[AWS Secrets Manager] is really good at managing the secrets for each environment (stage, production, ...), and with a simple command, the users will get all the variables for running the project. Depending on the user role, they could just read and/or edit the variables on the Secrets Manager on AWS. This facilitates the management of the secrets.

Incentivized

Vault is a reliable and resilient as the Key Management System. It is not for the novice user that does not have a background in information security. It requires a significant time investment into the different key engines that the solution offers to get started. It works very well once implemented and is very flexible in general.

Incentivized

• Single source of truth for secrets
• Securely share secrets with colleagues
• Securely store secrets for services to access during runtime

Incentivized

• The HTTP API you use to write and read secrets is open and can be used by any application.
• It keeps our sensitive data/credentials out of our GitLab repositories.
• Sealing and unsealing the Vault on demand adds an additional layer of security.

Incentivized

• It could be good if a user can use a variable in the project but can't see them in the manager on AWS

Incentivized

• Documentation for the API moves slower than changes in the API itself
• The database secret engine's API design isn't as elegant as it could be
• No support for revocation of all secrets under one path

Incentivized

HashiCorp Vault is the best there is out there, and it has become critical to our secret management use cases. It would be difficult to find anything that would suit our needs better and that would be beneficial for us to switch over to.

Incentivized

We spent a little more time than we imagined to conceptually understand how HashiCorp Vault operates, as well as how it is configured. This is not trivial, and keep in mind that you will need to take some time to get a thorough understanding of the tool. The documentation could be more helpful in this regard.

Incentivized

Hashicorp has been very responsive to our questions and inquiries up to this point. We are currently working on them to develop a more granular permissions model within Vault. We are very close to achieving our objectives with the help of their support team. We do not seem to be in the same time zone which makes it hard for escalated issues.

Incentivized

Both AWS Secrets Manager & MS Azure Key Vault are pretty similar. They're the default secrets manager on their respective cloud platform.

The choice comes down to where your infra resides on.

Incentivized

HashiCorp Vault integrates with a lot of tools and systems, and the documentation was pretty robust with a lot of community help. Because HashiCorp Vault is also older than other solutions, it is already well developed with a lot of features you need for storing secrets and configuration. HashiCorp Vault is also friendlier towards application build and is focused in providing security and a lot of customization for almost any use case scenario. Bitwarden is more limited to password management of enterprise accounts, but for application usage is not that great or easy to integrate. It does not scale well also. AWS Secrets Manager on the other hand is really good but more limited to AWS applications and vendor lock is problematic as well for such a critical piece of infrastructure.

• Costs are suitable
• ROI is positive

Incentivized

• Allowed better access control for credentials, passwords, and important keys.
• After we started using HashiCorp Vault, we were able to base our environment 100% as code.
• SSH access control that is possible using HashiCorp Vault adds an extra level of security in environments where external remote access is required.

Incentivized