secrets-management

Secrets Management

Secure secrets management practices for CI/CD pipelines using Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, and other tools.

Purpose

Implement secure secrets management in CI/CD pipelines without hardcoding sensitive information.

Use this skill when

• Store API keys and credentials
• Manage database passwords
• Handle TLS certificates
• Rotate secrets automatically
• Implement least-privilege access

Do not use this skill when

• You plan to hardcode secrets in source control
• You cannot secure access to the secrets backend
• You only need local development values without sharing

Instructions

1. Identify secret types, owners, and rotation requirements.
2. Choose a secrets backend and access model.
3. Integrate CI/CD or runtime retrieval with least privilege.
4. Validate rotation and audit logging.

Safety

• Never commit secrets to source control.
• Limit access and log secret usage for auditing.

Secrets Management Tools

HashiCorp Vault

• Centralized secrets management
• Dynamic secrets generation
• Secret rotation
• Audit logging
• Fine-grained access control

AWS Secrets Manager

• AWS-native solution
• Automatic rotation
• Integration with RDS
• CloudFormation support

Azure Key Vault

• Azure-native solution
• HSM-backed keys
• Certificate management
• RBAC integration

Google Secret Manager

• GCP-native solution
• Versioning
• IAM integration

HashiCorp Vault Integration

Setup Vault

# Start Vault dev server
vault server -dev

# Set environment
export VAULT_ADDR='http://127.0.0.1:8200'
export VAULT_TOKEN='root'

# Enable secrets engine
vault secrets enable -path=secret kv-v2

# Store secret
vault kv put secret/database/config username=admin password=secret

GitHub Actions with Vault

name: Deploy with Vault Secrets

on: [push]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4

    - name: Import Secrets from Vault
      uses: hashicorp/vault-action@v2
      with:
        url: https://vault.example.com:8200
        token: ${{ secrets.VAULT_TOKEN }}
        secrets: |
          secret/data/database username | DB_USERNAME ;
          secret/data/database password | DB_PASSWORD ;
          secret/data/api key | API_KEY

    - name: Use secrets
      run: |
        echo "Connecting to database as $DB_USERNAME"
        # Use $DB_PASSWORD, $API_KEY