Skip to main content

Why Hashicorp Vault Can Be Important

Image

As I have been working on many software projects and teams, I see that sharing credentials among developers is a common thing. Sometimes, developers store credentials in a file where everyone in the team can access them just to streamline the development process. But, I was also wondering how to maintain the security of the software or data managed while the credentials are accessible to everyone. How can we monitor the usage, make sure that no one in the team uses the credentials differently than they're supposed to be, or renew the credentials with ease? Hashicorp Vault is one of the solutions in the market that can answer that question.

There are three main problems that Vault solves.

The first is called secret sprawl where the credentials are spread everywhere to many individuals. Then, it becomes difficult when someone leave the team and we have to renew the existing credentials to secure the access. Vault can provide a mechanism to centralize the credentials storage, provide user authentication engine, and manage the access control. Everytime a user want to get a credential, she have to authenticate her self. When we want to renew the credential, we can set it on the centralised service.

The second problem is about securing credentials for application access. For example, an application needs to access the data in a database. Vault can enable dynamic credentials for the application to access the database. The flow is: first, the application will authenticate itself to Vault. Then, Vault will connect with the target database to generate dynamic credentials for the application. Lastly, Vault will send that dynamically generated credential to the application so that the application can use it to connect with the database.

The third is about managing credentials and performing encryption. Rather than building our own module in the application to perform encryption and properly manage the lifecycle of the credentials, we can leverage Vault to do it. Vault provides API endpoints to do common tasks in data encryption and credentials management.

Vault is developed using plugin-based approach. Each component is deployed as a plugin. There are two main plugin in the Vault which are authentication plugin and secret engine plugin. The authentication plugin allow users or applications to be authenticated by Vault such as username-password, token, Oauth, etc. While, secret engine plugins allow us generate dynamic secrets for a variety of existing services.

Labels:

Comments

  1. NikolayDecember 18, 2025 at 1:17 PM

    Browsing online for insightful essays, I came across SinomosioLogos, and the thoughtful reflections, bookish musings, and creative stories instantly captured my attention. Every post encourages introspection and provides meaningful content for curious readers seeking depth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NikolayDecember 18, 2025 at 1:33 PM


    The content on TurfEpicNo is impressive, offering a balanced mix of world news and technology coverage. Each post provides insightful analysis, engaging storytelling, and updates that are both informative and thought-provoking for curious readers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NikolayDecember 18, 2025 at 1:48 PM

    I recently explored LaRichesseTresor, and I am impressed by the depth of coverage. The website presents global news and scientific discoveries with context, helping readers understand the significance of events and their impact on society.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deploying a Web Server on UpCloud using Terraform Modules

In my earlier post , I shared an example of deploying UpCloud infrastructure using Terraform from scratch. In this post, I want to share how to deploy the infrastructure using available Terraform modules to speed up the set-up process, especially for common use cases like preparing a web server. For instance, our need is to deploy a website with some conditions as follows. The website can be accessed through HTTPS. If the request is HTTP, it will be redirected to HTTPS. There are 2 domains, web1.yourdomain.com and web2.yourdomain.com . But, users should be redirected to "web2" if they are visiting "web1". There are 4 main modules that we need to set up the environment. Private network. It allows the load balancer to connect with the server and pass the traffic. Server. It is used to host the website. Load balancer. It includes backend and frontend configuration. Dynamic certificate. It is requ...
95 comments
Read more

Increase of Malicious Activities and Implementation of reCaptcha

In recent time, I've seen the increase of malicious activities such as login attempts or phishing emails to some accounts I manage. Let me list some of them and the actions taken. SSH Access Attempts This happened on a server that host a Gitlab server. Because of this case, I started to limit the incoming traffic to the server using internal and cloud firewall provided by the cloud provider. I limit the exposed ports, connected network interfaces, and allowed protocols. Phishing Attempts This typically happened through email and messaging platform such as Whatsapp and Facebook Page messaging. The malicious actors tried to share a suspicious link lured as invoice, support ticket, or something else. Malicious links shared Spammy Bot The actors leverage one of public endpoint on my website to send emails. Actually, the emails won't be forwarded anywhere except to my own email so this just full my inbox. This bot is quite active, but I'm still not sure what...
3 comments
Read more

How To Discover Exposed Digital Assets for Free Using Noxtara

If you have a website or public-facing digital assets, you might wonder whether they’re secure and what potential entry points could be at risk. A great first step is to list all the digital assets connected to your main domain. One free tool that can help with this is called Noxtara. It offers a variety of security tools in one integrated dashboard, including a feature for discovering public-facing assets. Creating a free account is simple—just head over to the registration page . If you’ve got a company email that matches the domain you want to scan, it’s best to use that since it makes adding the domain to the Noxtara platform much easier. No worries if you don’t have a company email, though; you can still sign up without a problem. Just keep in mind that when you want to add your company’s domain for scanning, you’ll need to go through a quick DNS record check. Registration Once you’ve registered, you can set up a team and add your domain in the team settings. If the domai...
2 comments
Read more

What's Good About Strapi, a Headless CMS

Recently, I've been revisiting Strapi as a solution for building backend systems. I still think this headless CMS can be quite useful in certain cases, especially for faster prototyping or creating common websites like company profiles or e-commerce platforms . It might even have the potential to handle more complex systems. With the release of version 5, I'm curious to know what updates it brings. Strapi has launched a new documentation page, and it already feels like an improvement in navigation and content structure compared to the previous version. That said, there's still room for improvement, particularly when it comes to use cases and best practices for working with Strapi. In my opinion, Strapi stands out with some compelling features that could catch developers' attention. I believe three key aspects of Strapi offer notable advantages. First, the content-type builder feature lets us design the data structure of an entity or database model , including ...
4 comments
Read more

My Review for Free Project Management Tools

For about a year I had used Trello  as my team project management tool. It helps my team to maintain our "to-do" lists. But after increasing project numbers, as operation manager, I feel hard to maintain each of the team jobs on some projects. Some tasks become untouched. After a meeting, our team realizes that what the team need is clear detail about "What should I do today?" or "What should my teammates do today?". We need to find another project management tool. Trello uses the Kanban scheme which is very adaptive. I feel it's not suitable for my team, which consists of some people with different levels of expertise and who work on multiple projects. We need a tool that is better for a more prescriptive process to maintain our projects. Other features of the project management tool that we need are free, simple, secure, fast, and has mobile support. First, I search on Google for "Best Free Project Management Tool". After that, I decided...
5 comments
Read more

Manage Kubernetes Cluster using Rancher

Recently, I sought a simpler method to deploy and maintain Kubernetes clusters across various cloud providers. The goal was to use it for development purposes with the ability to manage the infrastructure and costs effortlessly. After exploring several options, I decided to experiment with Rancher. Rancher offers a comprehensive software stack for teams implementing container technology. It tackles both the operational and security hurdles associated with managing numerous Kubernetes clusters. Additionally, it equips DevOps teams with integrated tools essential for managing containerized workloads. Rancher also offers an open-source version, allowing free deployment within one's infrastructure. The Rancher platform can be deployed either as a Docker container or within a Kubernetes cluster utilizing the K3s engine. We can read the documentation on how to install Rancher on K3s using Helm . Rancher itself enables the creation and provisioning of Kubernetes clusters and ...
5 comments
Read more