SecretHub

If you are working with a remote developer team, then there is a fair chance that you need to access database passwords, various tokens or encryption keys. Manually deploying is a secure way to deploy the data, but is a rather slow process, whereas plain text is out of discussion as it may leave your business exposed.

SecretHub is a tool that enables you store the sensitive data encrypted and inject them into the application or code at runtime, while protecting them from automated scripts at the same time.

Before you can get started, you need to install the tool on your system, a process that is as simple as running the a command in PowerShell as Adminstrator. An alternative would be to run the utility as an isolated docker, but bear in mind that certain features may not be available in this case. On a side note, you can verify that the installation is completed correctly by inquiring about the version.

Following the installation, you need to use the secrethub signup command to create an account with the free cloud services. The credentials for this account are placed within the folder and are going to be accessed every time to authorize and encrypt the sensitive data locally.

It goes without saying that you can define the rules regarding who has read, write or admin access on a password or token as well as revoke these rights. The data can be injected into the system that needs them and you can use the templates embedded as well as other native integrations, such as Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible or Terraform.

Speaking of templates, their syntax enables you to remove the data from the configuration files and add them between environments. Lastly, each time you create the data, SecretHub makes a new version of it so you avoid overwriting and maintain your previous versions for other purposes.