In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations of all sizes are embarking on journeys to embrace cloud computing. Some are just beginning this transition, a phase we refer to as the "Adopting" stage. Others have progressed to a more advanced level, focusing on standardization and automation, known as the "Standardizing" stage. Lastly, there are organizations that have fully embraced multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies, enabling them to scale operations swiftly; we call this the "Scaling" stage.
No matter where an organization is in its cloud journey, a significant concern remains constant: the risk of account compromise. According to a comprehensive report by Verizon, account compromise stands as a leading cause of data breaches in cloud environments. Further emphasizing this point, Gartner predicts that through 2027, a staggering 99% of records compromised in cloud environments will be due to user misconfigurations and account compromises.
To mitigate these risks, effective secrets management is paramount. As an organization’s cloud environment becomes more intricate, its approach to managing secrets must evolve accordingly. This article outlines a 9-step, 18-point checklist of best practices for secrets management that can guide organizations through their cloud journey.
Adopting Stage
Organizations in the Adopting stage are just beginning to explore the cloud’s potential to enhance operations. In this phase, provisioning is often done on an ad-hoc basis, typically manually, as organizations experiment with various tools and strategies. Setting up a robust secrets management process at this stage is crucial.
Manage Static Secrets
Store secrets in a secure, central location: At this early stage, DevOps tools and workflows often rely on static, or unchanging, secrets. However, if not properly managed, these secrets can become a significant security risk. To prevent unauthorized access, it is essential to store secrets in a secure, centralized location. This practice minimizes the risk of "secret sprawl," a situation where secrets are scattered across different locations, increasing the chances of them being stolen or misused.
Authenticate and Authorize Secrets
Enable identity-based access and security: To prevent unauthorized access to secrets, implementing identity-based access controls (IBAC) is recommended. IBAC ensures that only trusted identities—whether human, machine-to-machine, or human-to-machine—can access secret data.
Enforce least-privileged access: Adopting the principle of least privilege ensures that users and systems have only the access necessary for their roles. Using identity providers like Okta, Ping, or Microsoft Entra ID can facilitate this process.
Establish Visibility
Track and monitor secrets: As cloud environments grow in complexity, maintaining visibility becomes challenging. Tools within a central secrets management system can help track and monitor secrets across environments, ensuring security.
Scan for unsecured secrets: Credential exposure is a significant risk. Regularly scanning for unsecured secrets helps identify vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Integrate with third-party monitoring solutions: If third-party tools are used for monitoring, integrating them with the secrets management solution can strengthen security.
Standardizing Stage
At this stage, organizations are focused on standardizing platforms and workflows, while automating processes. As environments expand to include different cloud providers, ensuring compliance across various clouds becomes a priority.
Automate Secrets Management
Modernize secrets management for legacy applications: Automation is key to modernizing secrets management for legacy applications, standardizing platforms, workflows, and tools.
Automatically generate dynamic secrets: Implement a secrets manager capable of generating dynamic, short-lived secrets automatically. This approach enhances security by reducing the lifespan of secrets.
Auto-rotation of secrets: For systems not yet equipped to handle rapid dynamic secret rotations, implementing a longer auto-rotation schedule can prevent secrets from becoming vulnerabilities.
Ensure Security Compliance Across All Environments
Automate workflows to detect and prevent unsecured secrets: Configure automated workflows to identify and prevent unsecured secrets from becoming exposed.
Automatically scan CI/CD pipelines: Scanning CI/CD pipelines automatically can prevent unsecured secrets from going undetected during development workflows.
Provide separate secrets management groupings/namespaces: Allow teams and departments to manage their own policies and secrets within their administrative zones, with access controls and guardrails for protection.
Detailed audit logging: Enabling detailed audit logging helps track secret usage, alerting organizations to suspicious behavior or potential breaches.
Protect Continuity of Secrets
Standardize application and service continuity: As cloud environments grow, replicating secrets and policies across different regions ensures continuity.
Protect against the loss of a secrets management cluster: Implementing high availability and using snapshot backups ensures secrets remain accessible and workflows continue during outages.
Scaling Stage
Organizations in the Scaling stage have established a solid cloud operating model and are expanding rapidly to accommodate growth and drive software development. This often involves authenticating on-premise systems alongside multi-cloud environments, adding complexity and requiring advanced capabilities.
Manage Keys and Certificates
Standardize PKI management: As cloud environments scale, the use of in-house public key infrastructure (PKI) certificates and keys becomes prevalent. Standardizing PKI management into a single platform enhances visibility, automates processes, and secures the management of keys and certificates.
Protect Sensitive Data
Support advanced data transformation: With growing complexity, employing advanced data protection techniques becomes essential. Encryption methods like format-preserving encryption (FPE), tokenization, and data masking safeguard secrets and sensitive data in transit and at rest.
Scale Out
Extend secrets management workflows: As organizations scale, it’s crucial to extend secrets management workflows across the entire digital estate, including private datacenters and private clouds.
Take the Next Step
Adopting cloud technology necessitates a new mindset and approach to operations. As organizations progress in their cloud journey, their approach to secrets management must mature to protect against threats and maintain compliance. For those seeking a more modern, holistic approach to security, governance, and compliance, exploring solutions used by other enterprises can provide valuable insights.
For a deeper dive into securing and governing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, organizations can refer to resources such as the HashiCorp solution brief, which outlines strategies for managing security at scale.
In summary, as organizations transition through the stages of cloud adoption, standardization, and scaling, the implementation of robust secrets management practices becomes increasingly critical. By following the outlined best practices, organizations can enhance their security posture, ensuring that their cloud environments remain secure and compliant.
For more Information, Refer to this article.
