Secrets Management vs. Access Management: What You Need to Know
When it comes to managing access in modern production environments, the lines between secrets management and access management can easily blur. But while both are essential, they serve fundamentally different purposes.
We frequently encounter the assumption that a secrets vault or a secrets manager can double as an access management tool. As our CTO Kevin Sapp emphasized recently, this assumption is misguided: Secrets management isn’t access management.
Secrets managers – like HashiCorp Vault or native cloud provider solutions – are excellent at securely storing and managing credentials, keys, and sensitive data. They provide a “vault” to house these secrets, ensuring they’re accessible to the right processes or services at the right time.
But secrets managers are inherently about managing identity data, not access. They store the identity that enables access, but they don’t manage the permissions, policies, or workflows that determine who or what gets access across a dynamic environment.
On the other hand, access management, specifically enabled via wokload IAM solutions, begins by verifying the identities of non-human entities, often without relying on traditional secrets like passwords or keys. Instead, workload IAM uses secretless credentials, such as short-lived certificates or tokens, which are dynamically issued and verified at the time of access. This step alone sets access management apart from secrets management, as it can eliminate the need for static, stored credentials that can be compromised or leaked.
But workload IAM doesn’t stop at verifying identity. It goes further by orchestrating conditional access – applying security policies dynamically, based on the current state, location, and context of the requesting workload. For instance, access can be granted or denied based on runtime conditions like whether the workload is compliant with security posture requirements or if it’s running in a known, secure environment. This level of conditional access is something secrets managers simply cannot see or manage.
The Role of Workload IAM in Securing Dynamic Environments
In contrast, secrets managers are unaware of the state or posture of workloads. They can provide a key or token, but they have no mechanism for evaluating the security status of the requesting workload or adjusting access rights based on evolving conditions. They lack the context-awareness and real-time decision-making that workload IAM provides, especially in complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
With secrets managers, once the key is leaked, the door is wide open for unauthorized access – there’s no additional safeguard to stop the breach. In contrast, workload IAM introduces multiple layers of protection. It doesn’t just verify possession of the key; it requires that the requesting workload be a known and trusted entity, while also passing all conditional access checks before any least privilege access is granted. This ensures access is not only secure but also situationally appropriate.
Another key distinction between secrets management and access management involves the cloud. Cloud providers don’t think of their vault as IAM solutions. In fact, they have dedicated IAM systems – but these cloud IAM systems are typically focused only on their own ecosystems. AWS IAM, for example, is excellent for managing access between AWS services, but it has no interest in connecting cross-cloud, on-premises, or SaaS environments. This narrow focus contrasts sharply with the capabilities of modern access management solutions, which provide true flexibility by enabling secure access across diverse and complex infrastructures.
The bottom line? Secrets management and access management may overlap in some areas, but they are fundamentally different. Secrets managers handle the data required for access, but they don’t manage the dynamic, contextual, and real-time policies that define who or what gets access, under what conditions. Treating them as interchangeable is a mistake, especially in environments that require advanced identity verification and conditional access enforcement.
For a deeper dive, this post explains the difference from a more technical standpoint.
The Workload IAM Company
Manage Access, Not Secrets
Boost Productivity, Slash DevSecOps Time
No-Code, Centralized Access Management
The post Secrets Management vs. Access Management: What You Need to Know appeared first on Aembit.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Aembit authored by Apurva Dave. Read the original post at: https://aembit.io/blog/secrets-management-vs-access-management-what-you-need-to-know/
