KMS
Key management service
A managed service, such as AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS or Azure Key Vault, that creates and stores keys, often in HSMs, and performs encryption, decryption, signing and key wrapping under access policies with audit logs, so applications never handle the key material.
- Defined in
- NIST glossary: Key Management Service
Covered in
Envelope encryption and key rotation: data keys, KMS keys and backups
Encrypt each record with its own data key, wrap that key in a KMS or HSM key, and keep wrapping-key rotation, data re-encryption, key deletion and restored backups as separate, tested operations.
Secrets at runtime: Vault, Kubernetes Secrets, CSI driver, External Secrets and SOPS
How a running workload should get its credentials: encrypt Kubernetes Secrets with a KMS v2 provider and lock down RBAC, mount from an external store with the Secrets Store CSI Driver, sync with External Secrets Operator, issue dynamic credentials with Vault and its Agent Injector, keep Git copies encrypted with SOPS, and make rotation reach the process.
Apply a security baseline across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
Give workloads platform identities instead of keys, guard the instance metadata endpoint, block public storage, keep audit logs past the default retention, close inbound admin ports and use the native secret store, with tested Terraform for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Practice: Local project: Bind ciphertext to the correct record