What Is Secrets Management?

Secrets management is how you store, distribute, rotate, and audit the credentials that applications and infrastructure use: API keys, database passwords, tokens, and certificates. These are non-human identity credentials, and leaked ones are a leading cause of cloud breaches.

The problem

Secrets end up hardcoded in source, baked into images, and pasted into config. Once leaked, many stay valid for a long time. Industry research finds millions of secrets exposed in public code each year, and a large share remain active.

What good looks like

• Central vault instead of secrets scattered across repos and pipelines.
• Dynamic, short-lived secrets issued on demand rather than long-lived static keys.
• Automated rotation so exposure windows stay small.
• Detection of secrets that leak into code and logs.
• Audit of who and what accessed each secret.

Related disciplines

Secrets management overlaps with PAM for privileged credentials, PKI for certificates, and broader non-human identity governance.

Where to start

Browse secrets management vendors and the machine identity vendors, and read the API key rotation guide.