High growth tech teams often manage sensitive data, credentials, and keys within their cloud environments. Poor secrets rotation or mismanaged encryption keys can become a single point of failure, risking breaches and compliance violations. Here are the best practices to ensure secrets and key management in AWS remain robust and secure.
1. Automate Secrets Rotation
Using AWS Secrets Manager, you can automate the rotation of database credentials, API keys, and other secrets without manual intervention. Automated rotation reduces human error, eliminates stale secrets, and ensures that credentials are regularly refreshed without downtime.
Key Points:
- Enable automatic rotation policies for each secret.
- Test rotation configurations to validate successful application connectivity post-rotation.
- Combine rotation with IAM roles for least privilege access to secrets.
2. Centralize Key Management with AWS KMS
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) allows you to create, rotate, and manage encryption keys centrally.
Best Practices:
- Enable automatic key rotation: For customer managed keys (CMKs), activate automatic rotation annually to maintain compliance standards like PCI-DSS and HIPAA.
- Use different keys for different data classes: Segregate keys based on workload sensitivity and regulatory requirements to limit blast radius in case of compromise.
- Implement least privilege key policies: Ensure only specific roles or services can encrypt or decrypt with each key, minimizing exposure.
3. Monitor Key and Secrets Usage
Monitoring is essential to detect unauthorized access or usage anomalies.
- Enable AWS CloudTrail logging for KMS: This records every use of your keys for audit and incident response.
- Use AWS Secrets Manager audit logs: Track secret retrievals and updates, enabling you to review who accessed what and when.
- Integrate these logs into your SIEM for proactive security analysis.
4. Enforce Strong Access Controls
- Attach IAM policies with minimal permissions to secrets and keys.
- Avoid embedding secrets directly in Lambda environment variables or code repositories.
- Use IAM roles with dynamic credentials for EC2, ECS, or Lambda to avoid static secrets where possible.
5. Encrypt Secrets at Rest and in Transit
AWS Secrets Manager encrypts secrets at rest using KMS by default. Ensure:
- KMS keys used for encryption are rotated annually.
- All API calls retrieving secrets are enforced over TLS to secure them in transit.
6. Regularly Audit and Rotate Keys
Even with automated rotation, schedule periodic reviews:
- Audit keys for unused or orphaned status and retire them securely.
- Validate that secrets and keys are not older than your organization’s compliance requirements.
- Update documentation and inform impacted teams before scheduled manual rotations.
7. Combine with IAMOPS DevSecOps AI for Best Practice Implementation
At IAMOPS, we integrate these practices into our DevSecOps AI. Our platform ensures secrets rotation and key management are embedded into your CI/CD pipelines and cloud architecture without slowing down version releases. The AI provides tailored security tasks for engineers with actionable steps, ensuring compliance and reducing operational risks for high growth companies.
Conclusion
Effective secrets rotation and key management are critical to maintaining a secure AWS environment. By automating processes, enforcing strict policies, and leveraging IAMOPS DevSecOps AI for proactive security management, high growth tech teams can protect their data, maintain compliance, and operate with confidence.
Need Support with Secrets and Key Management in AWS?
IAMOPS’ DevOps and DevSecOps teams help you implement these best practices seamlessly as part of your cloud security and architecture optimization initiatives. Book a consultation today to review your current secrets management posture and establish a roadmap for proactive security.
