GCP - Secret Manager Persistence

👉 Overview

👀 What ?

Google Cloud Platform's (GCP) Secret Manager is a secured and convenient method for storing API keys, passwords, certificates, and other sensitive data. It provides a central place for managing, accessing, and auditing secrets across Google Cloud.

🧐 Why ?

The importance of Secret Manager lies in its ability to help secure sensitive data in a cloud environment. It addresses the challenge of securely storing, distributing, and auditing the use of secrets. It is crucial for readers interested in cloud security and managing sensitive data.

⛏️ How ?

To use Secret Manager to your advantage, start by enabling Secret Manager API in your Google Cloud project. Create a secret by specifying a name and the sensitive data you wish to protect. Secrets can be accessed by applications through Cloud IAM policies. Use the Secret Manager API to access the secret value programmatically.

⏳ When ?

Google introduced Secret Manager in January 2020 as a part of their commitment to providing robust and comprehensive security features in their cloud platform.

⚙️ Technical Explanations

At its core, Secret Manager is built on the principle of least privilege, ensuring that applications, services, and users only have access to secrets that they need. Secrets in Secret Manager are immutable, meaning that once a secret version is created, its contents cannot be changed. Instead, new versions of a secret must be created. This immutability provides the ability to audit secret versions and track their usage over time. Secret Manager uses Google Cloud's robust IAM policies for access control, allowing fine-grained control over who can access a secret. All secret data is encrypted at rest and in transit, ensuring that your sensitive data is always secure.