A secret is an information that needs to be encrypted, and should define with a certain access to a specific set of people. This data may include passwords, API keys, cryptographic keys or even certificates. This is where the Security Key Vault from the Azure solution plays a picture. It is essential to understand that not all the information are meant for everyone. Therefore, it is your responsibility to make sure that they aren’t getting leaked even by chance. As a result, you need to make sure that those information aren’t stored even in the application as it does have an access to everyone.
This is typically a cloud service that offers a secret store for the important information that are not supposed to be disclosed by all. Just by the name, you can identify that this is a key vault which should not be accessed by everyone. You know that you have got a separate space for all your secrets to be stored, so that you know who can access it and when, and accordingly you can deal with it. This Azure Key Vault is secretly maintained, created, and further managed by the Azure portal so that you can be sure that all your data remains safe and secure all the time. By having a separate vault, you can choose to prevent exposure of all your secrets even due to an accident. Since you are going to have industry standard algorithms and hardware security modules to preserve your data, you can stay assured that everything remains in place.
What is so special about Azure Key Vault?
A lot of times, the developers tend to leave their source code in their passwords, or strings and as a result, you may see that the repercussions are on several other places when you have become a victim of unintended usage or exposure. It is essential to understand that preserving your data in a proper place is something that you need to bother about, and without proper authentication and authorization, you might end up falling into a trap. It is your sole responsibility to make sure that all your data is secured and you will be able to achieve it only when you have fine-tuned the permission and accessibility of your data with the relevant users.
Advantages of Azure Key Vault
Know that secret management is a critical aspect of any organization and you must take adequate care of the same. It may be used as a solution when it comes to key management wherein you might need to create and manage encryption keys for the data sets that you own. Here are a few benefits of the tool as listed below:
- Enhance the security and control over passwords and keys
- Create and import the encryption keys
- Applications having zero direct access to your keys
- Usage of FIPS 140 – 2 level 2 and level 3 validated HSMs
- A reduction in latency with global and cloud scale redundancy
- Simplify and automate your tasks with TLS/SSL certificates
- Assuring data protection and compliance
- Boosts the overall performance
Bottom line:
With the use of Azure Key Vault, you are not only able to secure your sensitive data but at the same time, you will be able to centralize it. The user needs to have the requisite authentication in order to have an access to the key vault and only then will he/she be able to fetch the data.
