Dynamic Secrets: Unleashing the Thor's Hammer ⚒️ of FOSS Security

Introduction

In today's cloud-native landscape, enterprises encounter substantial challenges when it comes to securely managing credentials. The ongoing debate over balancing security, flexibility, and cost-efficiency lacks a one-size-fits-all solution, with varying opinions ranging from using dedicated tools like Key Vault to implementing encryption methods.

Challenges

🔐 Concerned about credential compromise, theft, or data breach through unauthorized access?

🔐 Facing challenges in seamlessly integrating traditional secrets manager solutions across diverse environments?

🔐 Struggling with the high costs of proprietary secrets management solutions?

🔐 Why pay for storing credentials in a Key Vault when powerful and cost effective options are available through free and open-source tools?

🔐 Don't endure the pain of manual encryption and dynamic secrets management!

🔐 Why struggle with manual key rotation and cumbersome redistribution?

To tackle these challenges head-on, join us in exploring the magically world of open-source with HashiCorp Vault, a robust and developer-friendly solution for securely managing and storing credentials across diverse environments.

DEMO :

I will demostrate the Free and Open Source Tool : HashiCorp Vault

1. Installation : Step wise procedure to setup Hashicorp from scratch on your PC
2. Basic CRUD Operations : Using default kv Secret Engine perform basic CRUD Operations
3. Static vs Dynamic Secrets : Difference between Static and Dynamic Secrets in Hashicorp Vault
4. Using AWS Secret Engine: Using AWS secrets to experiment with Static credentials
5. Dynamic Secrets with AWS : Generating Dynamic Secrets and harnessing the POWER of FOSS tool
6. Operations by Using AWS Dynamic Secrets : Performing AWS Operations using Dynamic credentials
7. Lease : renewal, revocation and inspection : Understanding the lease and revocating the dynamic credentials ahead of expiry
8. AddingTTL (Expiry) : Creating a short lived 20 mins expiry Session Token , Monitoring post expiry
9. Disabling AWS Secret Engine : Steps to stop the aws secret engine securely

Detailed Steps are given in the repo markdown files : OpenSourceVault/HashiCorpVault at main · Sakshi-10/OpenSourceVault (github.com)

(Please follow the Instructions file for the sequencial process)

Real world Use Case:

1. Secrets of Cloud Platforms like AWS S3 Buckets, Azure Storage Account access keys can be dynamically secured in Free and Open Source vaults like Hashicorp Vault without hardcoding them in applications
2. To keep your database credentials secure and avoid hardcoding them in your configuration files, use Free and Open Source Vault to manage and dynamically generate these credentials.

Key Takeaways :

After attending this talk, audience will gain the following insights:

1. Security measures to be taken in real world when using Cloud Credentials
2. Secrets Management through centralized and secure way to store, access, and distribute secrets such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and tokens.
3. Mitigating the risk of using static secrets and transition to Dynamic Secrets
4. Robust access control mechanisms to manage who can access which secrets and under what conditions. This includes fine-grained policies and role-based access control (RBAC).
5. Auditing and Logging: for compliance and security monitoring purposes.
6. Lease Management: Leases for secrets can automatically be revoked if they're no longer needed or in case of a security breach, enhancing security.
7. Overall spread awareness about various FOSS tools that can be used in different situations/ cases based on requirements.

Let's harness the incredible power of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) through the Thor's Hammer and protect the Asgard (Applications) from potential threats.