Six Best Practices for Secrets Management

A secret refers to the non-human privileged credentials used by systems and applications to access services and IT resources containing highly sensitive information and privileged systems. Secrets allow applications to transmit data and request services from each other. Examples of secrets include access tokens, SSH keys, non-human privileged account credentials, cryptographic keys and API keys. 

Organizations use secrets to access and transmit highly sensitive data to run their operations. They need to protect their secrets from unauthorized access by implementing and practicing good secrets management. Some of the best practices for secrets management include differentiating secrets and identifiers, enforcing password security best practices, encrypting secrets and using a secrets management tool.

Continue reading to learn more about secrets management, the challenges of secrets management and secrets management best practices.

What Is Secrets Management and Why Is It Important?

Organizations have many types of secrets to manage, which are used in different ways. Many secrets are hardcoded in scripts, configurations or source codes, making them easy targets for cybercriminals. Secrets management is the process of organizing, managing and securing IT infrastructure secrets. With secrets management, organizations can securely store, transmit and audit secrets to ensure systems function properly. A secrets management tool protects an organization’s confidential data and highly sensitive apps and systems from unauthorized access.

The Challenges of Secrets Management

Mismanaged secrets can lead to data breaches and compromised credentials. If an organization’s secrets become compromised, it can damage its reputation, reveal confidential data and cost millions to recover. Here are the challenges organizations face when managing secrets.

Lack of visibility of how secrets are managed

Organizations often face a problem known as secrets sprawl, in which they have an increasing number of hardcoded secrets being used throughout their infrastructure.  With so many secrets to manage and a decentralized secrets management system, organizations lack visibility and awareness of where all of their secrets actually are. This oversight leaves major security gaps and auditing difficulties for the organization.

Lack of uniform secrets management policy

Many organizations have different teams that use their secrets differently. Without a uniform secrets management policy, each team independently manages their secrets under their control. This lack of a uniform secrets management policy can make it difficult to keep track of secrets and for other teams to access them since every team has its own way of managing secrets. This can leave secrets stored in insecure locations and mismanaged with poor password security, increasing the risk of unauthorized access.

Lack of centralized secrets management tool

Some apps and devices come with built-in secrets management tools. However, those secrets management tools can only be accessed by those specific apps and devices, making it difficult to understand where secrets are, who can access them and how they are being used. A centralized secrets management tool allows organizations to store, track and manage all of their secrets in one place, enforce secrets management policies, prevent secrets sprawl and avoid data breaches. 

Secrets Management Best Practices

Managing secrets can be difficult if an organization has too many secrets and lacks a centralized secrets management tool. To protect secrets from unauthorized users and prevent data breaches, organizations need to implement the following secrets management best practices.

Differentiate between secrets and identifiers

The first step of good secrets management is to identify all of an organization’s secrets. Organizations need to identify every secret within their network to ensure that they are secure and unauthorized users cannot access them. Organizations need to also differentiate between secrets and identifiers. 

Identifiers are used within Identity Access Management (IAM) platforms to authenticate and authorize users’ digital identities before granting access to general systems and resources. Secrets give systems and applications access to highly sensitive information. They need to be strictly controlled and heavily secured. Although both secrets and identifiers need to be protected from unauthorized access, secrets require stricter security due to their access to highly sensitive information.

Manage privileges

Organizations need to manage who has privileges to highly sensitive data and systems. They should implement the principle of least privilege when managing privileges. The principle of least privilege is a cybersecurity concept that gives users and applications just enough access to highly sensitive resources to do their jobs and no more. Implementing the principle of least privilege prevents misuse through insider threats and lateral movement within an organization’s network by cybercriminals. 

Enforce password security best practices

Organizations need to enforce password security best practices for all of their IT secrets. To protect secrets, an organization’s passwords should be both long and complex to make it difficult for cybercriminals to guess them. A strong password is a unique and random combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters that is at least 16 characters long. 

Organizations should also require Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to access secrets. MFA is a security protocol that requires additional forms of authentication. With MFA enabled, users and systems are required to provide more than one authentication factor to access a secret. This provides an extra layer of security and only permits access by authorized users. 

Rotating secrets is a practice of regularly changing secrets at a predetermined schedule or on demand. Organizations should also practice rotating secrets to ensure secrets are not accidentally leaked and compromised by unauthorized users. Rotating secrets ensures that users have a limited time using them and newly generated secrets are strong and unique. 

Store secrets with encrypted storage

Organizations often leave their secrets in insecure locations, such as hardcoded in source code or within configuration files as plaintext. Cybercriminals often target hardcoded secrets because they are easy to access. Organizations should eliminate hardcoded secrets and other insecure storage methods. They should properly store their secrets in an encrypted storage method such as a secrets management tool. A secrets management tool converts plaintext secrets into ciphertext, making them unreadable to unauthorized users. The encrypted secrets can only be decrypted using a secret key or password.

Monitor unauthorized access

No matter how secure an organization is, it needs to prepare for data breaches by regularly monitoring for unauthorized access and having an incident response plan. Organizations need to see who is accessing their secrets and how their secrets are being used. By regularly monitoring for unauthorized access, organizations can mitigate the effects of data breaches or prevent future ones by immediately removing unauthorized users and changing any compromised credentials.

Use a centralized secrets management tool

To best keep track of all secrets and manage them properly, organizations should use a centralized secrets management tool. A secrets management tool allows organizations to implement secrets management policies across their entire data environment. With a secrets management tool, organizations can easily keep track of all of their secrets in one location and ensure they can only be accessed by authorized users and systems. Organizations can see who has access to their secrets and how they are being used. They can also protect secrets by generating new ones and protecting them with passwords and MFA.

Manage Secrets With Keeper Secrets Manager®

The best way to manage an organization’s secrets and implement secrets management best practices is with a secrets manager. With a secrets manager, organizations can keep track of all of their secrets and ensure they are protected with encryption. 

Keeper Secrets Manager (KSM) is a cloud-based zero-trust and zero-knowledge secrets management solution that allows organizations to secure their secrets all in one place. With KSM, organizations can consolidate their secrets in a centralized location with audibility, integrate secrets into their infrastructure, manage access and permissions to secrets, automate secrets rotation and remove hardcoded credentials. 

Request a demo of Keeper Secrets Manager to start protecting your organization’s secrets.