What Is Cloud Secrets Management?
Cloud secrets management refers to cloud-based methods and tools that organizations use to secure and manage their digital credentials like signatures and keys. Accessibility and authorization are at the forefront of cloud secrets management, and each cloud-based platform will have its interpretation of secrets management services. While services are similar and lead to similar outcomes, different cloud providers will offer slightly different tools for usage.
Without cloud-based secrets management and a skilled DevOps team, your keys and secrets are accessible to all, even bad actors. Cloud-based secrets can be among some of the following:
● APIs
● Passwords
● SSH keys
● Tokens
● Encryption keys
● Private certificates
Cloud secrets management platforms keep their businesses safe with proper secrets management. A way to make the work easier, but just as if not more effective, is to use DevOps management tools tailored to your cloud provider.
Why do you need a cloud secrets manager or even a management strategy? Well, Sensitive business resources need protection, especially when accessible globally like cloud-based resources are. You will want to prevent data leakage and hackers from gaining access to data whenever possible.
Key Aspects of Cloud Secrets Management
Cloud secrets management refers to the centralized control of sensitive credentials such as API keys, tokens, passwords, and certificates across cloud-native and multi-cloud environments. It plays a crucial role in enabling secure and scalable secret management in cloud-native environments. Core capabilities include:
- Unified vault: Centralizes secrets from diverse sources into a single, cloud-hosted platform.
- Zero-knowledge encryption: Ensures secrets remain private with encryption models like DFC™.
- Dynamic secrets: Issues just-in-time, short-lived credentials to minimize exposure and reduce risk.
- Identity-based access: Ties access permissions to verified human and machine identities, enforcing the principle of least privilege.
- Secretless access: Enables real-time authentication without storing or distributing secrets to workloads.
- Scalability: Delivers high availability and elastic performance across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
- Audit and monitoring: Logs every access and operation with immutable audit trails to support compliance and forensics.
Benefits of using Cloud Secrets Management
A modern cloud secrets manager does the following to enforce security and compliance:
- Eliminates secrets sprawl: Removes hard-coded credentials from codebases, scripts, and config files, thereby reducing exposure and simplifying cleanup.
- Accelerates DevOps: Streamlines CI/CD pipelines with automated secret injection, rotation, and access provisioning.
- Centralized visibility: Provides unified control over secrets across AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and on-prem environments.
- Strengthens security: Leverages dynamic secrets and secretless access to limit attack surfaces and prevent lateral movement.
- Reduces operational overhead: SaaS delivery eliminates the need to manage vault infrastructure, lowering total cost of ownership.
- Supports compliance: Helps meet SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other regulatory requirements with full audit trails and policy enforcement.
As one of the best cloud-based secrets management tools, Akeyless combines robust security with simplified operations.
Why Akeyless is best cloud secrets manager?
The best cloud secrets manager should be secure, scalable, and easy to integrate across environments. Akeyless is not only built for the cloud, it’s recognized as a top secrets management solution for cloud apps, checking every box with a uniquely modern approach:
- SaaS vault with DFC™: Patented Distributed Fragments Cryptography ensures zero-knowledge encryption.
- Unified secrets platform: Manages all secrets, including credentials, certificates, SSH keys, and API tokens from one place across cloud and on-prem.
- Agentless, secretless access: Eliminates secrets distribution and reduces attack surfaces with native integrations into cloud and Kubernetes platforms.
- Built for multi-cloud: Seamlessly integrates with AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid infrastructure without duplicating vaults or tooling.
- API-first & DevOps-ready: Supports Terraform, CI/CD, K8s External Secrets, and more for automated provisioning and rotation.
- Lower operational overhead: Akeyless scales with you without the cost and complexity of traditional vaults.
Best Practices for securing secrets in the cloud
Automated cloud secrets management is a means to avoid human error and inefficiency. Regardless of your cloud-based secrets needs, you should follow best practices wherever possible to ensure a high privacy and security standard for your company.
Here are some best practices to follow to ensure a high standard.
- Strict password policies. Users will need to create complex but easy-to-remember passwords. Users should also change their passwords after every potential breach, as well as at regular time intervals, like 60 days. Passwords should include numbers, letters, symbols, and a minimum length requirement.
- Limited decentralized management. While cloud service platforms like Google Cloud and AWS require a bit of decentralization, your business structure should be as centralized as possible to ensure your employees communicate and collaborate. Security and privacy are a team effort, and every employee, from the CEO to the receptionist, needs to be involved and communicate when necessary.
- Monitor employee behavior at work. Secrets management is only as secure as an employee allows it to be. If a user writes down his or her password on a sticky note or instant messages it to a coworker, that password is no longer secure. Train and expect employees to have strict standards regarding secrets management and hold them accountable when possible.
- Provide employee training. Employee training will allow employees to be up-to-date on the latest and greatest cybersecurity threats related to your business. Training will allow your employees to practice safe secrets management and ask questions when necessary.
FAQs on Cloud Secrets Management
Which secrets manager is best for cloud?
The best cloud secret manager should be built for the cloud, not just compatible with it. Akeyless is a true cloud-native SaaS solution designed to operate securely and seamlessly across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Its zero-knowledge encryption, multi-cloud integrations, and agentless architecture eliminate the need to deploy or manage infrastructure.
Unlike traditional vaults that rely on self-hosting or cloud-specific setups, Akeyless delivers unified secrets management as a scalable, always-available service purpose-built for dynamic, cloud-first environments.
What’s the best secrets management tool for multi-cloud environments?
Akeyless is the top tool for multi-cloud environments. It offers native integrations with AWS, Azure, and GCP, along with seamless support for hybrid and Kubernetes environments. Its agentless, SaaS-based model removes the need for multiple vaults or cloud-specific setups by providing a single, unified platform that manages secrets across all environments with ease and consistency.
How does secret management software improve security in cloud?
Secret management software strengthens cloud security by eliminating hard-coded credentials, automating secret rotation, and enabling time-bound, dynamic access. It enforces strict access controls, provides full audit trails, and supports just-in-time authentication, which helps prevent credential leaks, unauthorized access, and lateral movement across cloud environments.
How does a cloud secrets manager fit into an overall security strategy?
A cloud secrets manager plays a crucial role in enforcing zero-trust security and enhancing identity and access management (IAM). By securing credentials, limiting their lifespan, and tying access to verified identities, it reduces the attack surface and prevents unauthorized access. It also supports compliance and complements controls like MFA, SSO, and workload identity, making it essential to any modern security architecture.
How Akeyless cloud secrets manager secures secrets in the cloud
Akeyless utilizes Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC™), a zero-knowledge encryption method that ensures secrets are never exposed—even to Akeyless itself. It supports Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) with leading cloud KMS providers, applies fine-grained access controls, and automates credential rotation. Secrets are delivered securely at runtime without being stored on hosts or containers, and all access is fully audited for compliance.
How is cloud secrets manager integration implemented in cloud infrastructure platforms?
Integration typically involves linking your secrets manager with identity providers (like IAM roles or service accounts), setting access policies, and automating workflows using SDKs, CLIs, or IaC tools. Akeyless streamlines this process with native support for AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and leading CI/CD platforms, without the need for agents or vault replicas.
