11 Best Secret Management Tools to Secure Your Digital Assets in 2024

Secret management tool helps businesses protect sensitive data by securely storing and encrypting passwords, API keys, and certificates in centralized vaults. This ensures that only authorized users and applications can access these secrets, reducing the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches.

Businesses that leverage a secret management tool minimize the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information while simplifying secret management through centralized control. These tools offer benefits such as automated secret rotation, comprehensive audit trails for compliance, reduced operational complexity, and easy integration with DevOps workflows.

Geekflare has researched and compiled a list of the best secret management tools based on key features such as encryption standards, access controls, audit logging, user management integration capabilities, scalability, and pricing.

• 1. HCP Vault – Best for Secrets Storage and Encryption
• 2. AWS Secrets Manager – Best for Integration with AWS Services
• 3. Akeyless – Best for Unified Secrets Management
• 4. SOPS – Best for YAML and JSON File Encryption
• 5. Azure Key Vault – Best for Microsoft Ecosystem Integration
• 6. Docker Secrets – Best for Containerized Application Secrets
• 7. Doppler – Best Developer-friendly
• 8. Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise – Best for Enterprise Privileged Access
• 9. Google Cloud Secret Manager – Best for Google Cloud Integrations
• 10. HashiCorp Vault Enterprise – Best for Multi-Cloud Environments
• 11. Knox – Best for Secrets Rotation
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HCP Vault

HCP Vault is secret management software that helps store and control access to tokens, certificates, encryption keys, and passwords. You can secure all these secrets using UI, CLI, or HTTP API. It controls access to encryption keys and secrets by authenticating against trusted identity sources like LDAP, Kubernetes, Active Directory, CloudFoundry, and cloud platforms. 

HCP Vault encrypts all your secrets through a centralized workflow. It offers various data protection capabilities, such as data tokenization, format-preserving encryption (FPE), traditional data encryption, and data masking. All these measures protect data in transit and at rest in data centers and cloud platforms. 

HCP Vault allows users to generate dynamic tokens. Users can also generate time-based tokens/ credentials based on policies and revoke access when the lease expires. Such tokens are also extensible with plugins.

HCP Vault Pricing

HCP Vault offers various plans to suit different needs. The Community plan is a free, self-managed option. The Cloud or Managed Vault plan is free for up to 25 Secrets per month. Dedicated plans start at $1.58 per hour.

Try HCP Vault

AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager, developed by Amazon, allows you to rotate, retrieve, and manage database credentials and API keys throughout their lifecycles. It uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for secure secret access, ensuring only authorized users can access secrets. Additionally, features like the AWS security scanner help keep your private credentials safe.

AWS Secrets Manager periodically rotates secrets to enhance security. You can automate this process using managed rotation or a Lambda function. Its managed rotation handles your configuration and management, while the Lambda function updates secrets automatically.

AWS Secrets Manager Pricing

AWS uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, ensuring you only pay for the resources you use.

Try AWS Secrets Manager

Akeyless

Akeyless is a unified secret management platform that automates access and safeguards sensitive credentials across all your cloud platforms and DevOps tools. It simplifies managing and protecting secrets, ensuring security and efficiency.

Akeyless lets you centralize and manage all your secrets by connecting with external secret management tools. With auto-expiring credentials, you can eliminate standing privileges and enhance infrastructure security. You can generate temporary credentials tailored to your development environment and integrate them into CI/CD pipelines. Additionally, it allows authorized users to access secrets without hindering development processes.

Akeyless enables temporary sharing of secrets with third parties, providing an audit trail with detailed session logs to track access. It integrates with various Azure and AWS ecosystem tools to ease secret management.

Akeyless Pricing

Akeyless has a free plan that supports 2,000 Static Secrets and 5 clients and offers 3 days of log retention. The pricing for the Enterprise package is available on request. 

Try Akeyless

SOPS

SOPS is a versatile secret management tool for managing secrets that supports various file formats, including BINARY, YAML, JSON, ENV, and INI. It encrypts files using methods like PGP, Azure Key Vault, and AWS KMS and enables editing of encrypted and decrypted files.

SOPS has a key groups feature that requires multiple master keys for decryption, enhancing security by preventing unauthorized access. If direct access to the encryption keys is not possible, the SOPS key service enables remote access to these keys through socket forwarding.

SOPS provides audit logs for all the encrypted files to determine who accessed them and when. After decryption, you can get all the audit logs in a pre-configured PostgreSQL database format. It secures all your data files using the AES256_GCM symmetric encryption algorithm. 

SOPS Pricing

SOPS is an open-source, free-to-use secret management tool. 

Try SOPS

Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a secret management tool for safeguarding secrets and cryptographic keys used in cloud environments and apps. It eliminates the need to configure, provision, maintain, and patch HSMs and key management software. It provides a central repository for all your keys, allowing you to grant access to your applications or partners as needed.

Microsoft doesn’t access your keys. However, Azure Key Vault will encrypt small secrets and keys and store them in hardware security modules (HSMs). All the vaults are secured through FIPS 140-2 Level 2, while HSM pools get FIPS 140-2 Level 3. Get reports of all the key usage through the pipe logs. You can also check your security information and detect threats before they hit. 

Azure Key Vault reduces latency by storing keys locally instead of in the cloud, meeting the cryptographic demands of cloud applications. It scales automatically to handle peak demand, eliminating the need for dedicated HSMs. Microsoft’s globally distributed data centers also ensure your apps utilize the nearest location.

Azure Key Vault Pricing

Azure Key Vault follows a pay-as-you-use pricing model with two tiers: Standard and Premium. Both tiers charge $0.03 per 10,000 transactions. The key difference is that the Standard tier does not include HSM-protected keys, unlike the Premium tier.

Try Key Vault

Docker Secrets

Docker Secrets, developed by Docker, is a robust tool for securely managing and transmitting secrets to specific containers. It encrypts secrets both in transit and at rest within a Docker swarm, ensuring they are accessible only to authorized services and only when those services are running.

Docker Secrets offers an abstraction layer between credentials and containers, making it useful for various environments like development, testing, and production. You can store different credentials for each environment using the same secret name, ensuring that a container only needs to know the secret’s name to function across all environments.

Docker Secrets Pricing

Docker Secrets is an integral part of the Docker ecosystem. It offers a free personal plan with features like Docker Desktop and unlimited public repositories. For advanced features, paid plans start at $5 per month.

Try Docker Secrets

Doppler

Doppler centralizes secrets across teams, infrastructure, and projects. The Secrets Editor, designed for developers and engineers, offers flexibility and speed. You can import secrets in .env, YAML, or JSON formats and export them using the API, CLI, or dashboard.

Doppler offers endless integrations to streamline operations and enhance security. Connect seamlessly with GCP Secret Manager, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, AWS Secrets Manager, Okta, and many other platforms. 

Mitigating outages is easy, as Doppler automatically detects and alerts the concerned team members when a secret is missing. The note feature simplifies sharing critical information about individual secrets.

Doppler Pricing

Doppler’s free plan supports up to three users and includes service tokens, secret referring, secret value types, and three days of activity logs. Paid plans start at $18/month per user and offer advanced features like role-based access control and 90 days of activity logs.

Try Doppler

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise is a self-hosted service for CI/CD pipelines, DevOps tools, and containerized and cloud-native applications. It securely stores database credentials, preventing unauthorized access and enhancing DevSecOps by avoiding hard-coded secrets.

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise easily integrates with CI/CD toolchains, public cloud platforms, PaaS platforms, DevOps, and automation tools, including Ansible, Cloudbees CI, and Jenkins.

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise offers robust security features, simplifying container and application authentication with role-based access controls. It also provides a tamper-proof audit trail for recording all events, allowing teams to focus on development while ensuring app security.

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise Pricing

Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise doesn’t list pricing details publicly. Interested users can obtain more information by clicking the “Request a Demo” button.

Try Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise

Google Cloud Secret Manager

Google Cloud Secret Manager securely stores sensitive data such as certificates, passwords, and API keys. It offers a centralized platform for managing secrets and provides a single source of truth within Google Cloud. It follows the Principle of Least Privilege, allowing you to separate access to secrets from their management.

All data is secured at rest with AES-256-bit and in transit with TLS encryption. Google has data centers in different parts of the world. You can thus select where your secrets will reside to ensure high availability. Secret Manager also provides automatic secret replication to ensure your data is available when needed.

Secret Manager offers first-class versioning, enabling easy access to previous versions of a secret. You can pin secrets to floating aliases like ‘latest’ or specific versions like ’50’. You can enable  Cloud Audit Logs, get entries for every interaction with the Secret Manager, and even detect abnormalities. 

Google Cloud Secret Manager Pricing

Google Secrets Manager has a free plan up to a certain usage limit, such as 10,000 operations and six active secret versions. If you exhaust the free monthly credits, Google will charge you based on your consumption and usage.

Try Google Cloud Secret Manager

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise is a self-managed secrets management tool for storing and managing big organizations’ static secrets and dynamic credentials. It makes it easy to centrally store, deploy, manage, and rotate value/key pair secrets across services, systems, applications, and infrastructure in clouds or on-premise. It integrates with a deep ecosystem of trusted identity providers and partners to authenticate Vault.

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise allows users to automate developer workflows. Users can integrate security policies and secrets management across privileged access workflows, developer CI/CD pipelines, DevOps environments, and service authentication with Consul, Boundary, and HashiCorp Terraform. You can also enable a multi-server mode, configuring availability across different zones to reduce downtimes.

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise Pricing

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise has custom pricing that depends on the organization’s needs. 

Try HashiCorp Vault Enterprise

Knox

Knox is a secret management tool developed by Pinterest to manage secrets across its infrastructure securely. The Pinterest team created Knox to address challenges like network protection via TLS, cookie signing, third-party communication, and data encryption.

After their success, the Pinterest team open-sourced Knox, enabling other companies to manage and store passwords, keys, and credentials securely.

Knox encrypts secrets in transit and at rest to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access. Its robust logging features allow users to keep track of secrets and monitor suspicious activities. It is open-source, making it easy to customize to suit your needs. 

Knox Pricing

Knox is a free software under the Apache 2.0 license. 

Try Knox

Here, we compare the best secret management tools based on deployment models, integration, and pricing structure.

What is a Secret Management Tool?

A secret management tool stores and accesses sensitive information like passwords, API keys, and private certificates in centralized vaults. They offer auditing, role-based permissions, and logging features to track access, enhancing security and compliance.

A secret management tool ensures that secrets remain secure and accessible only to authorized users or systems. IT professionals, DevOps teams, and developers use these tools to handle confidential data securely. They are available in open-source, paid, or freemium versions.

Features of Secret Management Software

Secret management software typically offers the following features:

• Secure Storage: Secrets are encrypted both at rest and in transit, stored in a centralized location, and isolated from other data types to prevent security breaches.
• Fine-Grained Access Control: Different team members can have different access levels to secrets depending on their job description and rank in the organization. 
• Secrets Rotation: Secrets are automatically rotated at regular intervals, minimizing the risk of compromise.
• Audit Trails: Records of all actions performed on secrets are available. These actions can be creation, access, and modifications. 
• Integration with Dev Tools: Secret management tools should seamlessly integrate with development and deployment processes. 

Secret management tools provide several benefits, particularly in environments where security and compliance are critical. Here are some benefits:

• Enhanced Security: Secret management tools ensure that all secrets are encrypted while in transit and at rest. Such controls also allow users to set granular control, ensuring only authorized users access certain secrets. 
• Centralized Management: Secret management tools offer a single source of truth by storing all the secrets in a single location. 
• Automated Rotation and Management: Regularly changing API keys and passwords mitigates the risk of unauthorized access. Automating this process makes it more efficient and frees up the IT department’s hands. 
• Audit Trails and Compliance: Secret management tools provide detailed logs of all secrets stored, their access, and modification history. 
• Reduced Operational Complexity: Secret management tools reduce the risk of human error and simplify the management of secrets across different applications and systems. 
• Integration with DevOps: These tools integrate with CI/CD pipelines for efficient and secure deployments. 

Best Practices for Secret Management in Application Development

Managing secrets securely is crucial in application development to protect sensitive information such as API keys, passwords, and certificates. Here are some best practices for secret management:

Centralized Secrets Management

Some organizations store their APIs in different locations from their login credentials. Having a central place for all your secrets is more secure than having them spread across various platforms. However, the central place should have sound security policies to avoid unauthorized access. 

Have Granular Control 

Effective secrets management tools offer granular access control based on employee seniority, allowing junior members to perform basic tasks while senior members can read, modify, delete, and add new secrets. You can also leverage an enterprise password manager to enforce granular access controls for login credentials. 

Enforce Dynamic Secrets 

Most organizations have static secrets. However, such an approach exposes your organization to hacking threats and unauthorized access to essential data. Just-in-Time (JIT) credentials change dynamically to minimize the hacking risks. Always ensure you turn on the dynamic secrets feature if the secrets management tool you select has this feature. 

Audit Permissions and Access 

Secrets such as passwords, API keys, and private certificates can expose your organization badly. Always ensure you have a trail of who is accessing the secrets, when, and how. A good tool can also analyze patterns and send alerts in case of irregular patterns. 

Stores Secrets in an Encrypted Environment

Encryption adds another security layer even if unauthorized users access your secrets. Hackers or unauthorized users will have unreadable data, making it hard to use the secrets accessed. The encryption should be in transit and also at rest. 

Frequently Asked Questions

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