What Is AWS Secrets Manager?

AWS provides a service, AWS Secrets Manager, to make it easier for you to manage application secrets. Secrets can be database credentials, passwords, third-party API keys, and even arbitrary text. You can centrally store and control access to these secrets by using the Secrets Manager console, the Secrets Manager command line interface (CLI), or the Secrets Manager API and SDKs.

In the past, when you created a custom application that retrieves information from a database, you typically embedded the credentials (the secret) for accessing the database directly into the application. When the time came to rotate the credentials, you had to do more than just create new credentials. You had to invest the time to update the application to use the new credentials. Then you had to distribute the updated application. If you had multiple applications with shared credentials and you missed updating one of them, the application would break. Because of this risk, many customers choose not to regularly rotate their credentials, which effectively substitutes one risk for another.

Secrets Manager enables you to replace hardcoded credentials in your code, including passwords, with an API call to Secrets Manager and retrieve the secret programmatically. This helps ensure the secret can't be compromised by someone examining your code, because the secret isn't in the code. Also, you can configure Secrets Manager to automatically rotate the secret for you according to a specified schedule. This enables you to replace long-term secrets with short-term ones, which significantly reduces the risk of compromise.

Getting Started with Secrets Manager

For a list of terms and concepts that you need to understand to make full use of Secrets Manager, see Key Terms and Concepts for AWS Secrets Manager.

Typical users of Secrets Manager have one or more of the following roles:

Secrets Manager administrator – Administers the Secrets Manager service. Grants permissions to individuals who can perform the other roles listed here.
Database or service administrator – Administers the database or service with secrets stored in Secrets Manager. Determines and configures the rotation and expiration settings for secrets.
Application developer – Creates the application, and configures it to request the appropriate credentials from Secrets Manager.

Basic Secrets Manager Scenario

The following diagram illustrates the most basic scenario. It displays how you can store credentials for a database in Secrets Manager, and then use those credentials in an application to access the database.

The database administrator creates a set of credentials on the Personnel database to use with an application called MyCustomApp. The administrator also configures those credentials with the required permissions to access the Personnel database.
The database administrator stores the credentials as a secret in Secrets Manager named MyCustomAppCreds. Secrets Manager encrypts and stores the credentials within the secret as the protected secret text.
When MyCustomApp needs to access the database, the application queries Secrets Manager for the secret named MyCustomAppCreds.
Secrets Manager retrieves the secret, decrypts the protected secret text, and returns it to the client application over a secureHTTPS with TLS channel.
The client application parses the credentials, connection string, and any other required information from the response and then uses the information to access the database server.

Note

Secrets Manager can work with many types of secrets. However, Secrets Manager can natively rotate credentials for supported AWS databases without requiring additional programming. However,if you want to rotate the secrets for other databases or services, you must create a custom Lambda function to define how Secrets Manager interacts with the database or service. You need some programming skill to create that function. For more information, see Rotating Your AWS Secrets Manager Secrets.

Features of Secrets Manager

Programmatically Retrieving Encrypted Secret Values at Runtime Instead of Storing Them

One of the most important reasons to use Secrets Manager is to help you improve your security posture by removing hard-coded credentials from your application source code, and by not storing credentials within the application, in any way. Storing the credentials within the application subjects them to possible compromise by anyone who can inspect your application or the components. Since you must update your application and deploy the changes to every client before you can deprecate the old credentials, this process makes rotating your credentials difficult.

Secrets Manager enables you to replace stored credentials with a runtime call to the Secrets Manager web service, so you can retrieve the credentials dynamically when you need them.

Most of the time, your client wants to access the most recent version of the encrypted secret value. When you query for the encrypted secret value, you can choose to provide only the secret name or Amazon Resource Name (ARN), without specifying any version information at all. If you do this, Secrets Manager automatically returns the most recent version of the secret value.

However, other versions can exist at the same time. Most systems support secrets more complicated than a simple password such as full sets of credentials including the connection details, the user ID, and the password. Secrets Manager allows you to store multiple sets of these credentials at the same time. Secrets Managerstores each set in a different version of the secret. During the secret rotation process, Secrets Manager tracks the older credentials you're replacing, as well as the new credentials, until completing the rotation. .. Secrets Manager tracks these different versions by using staging labels.

Storing Just About Any Kind of Secret

Secrets Manager enables you to store text in the encrypted secret data portion of a secret. This typically includes the connection details of the database or service. These details can include the server name, IP address, and port number, as well as the user name and password used to sign in to the service. For details on secrets, see the maximum and minimum values. The protected text doesn't include:

Secret name and description
Rotation or expiration settings
ARN of the AWS KMS customer master key (CMK) associated with the secret
Any attached AWS tags

Encrypting Your Secret Data

Secrets Manager encrypts the protected text of a secret by using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). Many AWS services use AWS KMS for key storage and encryption services. . This helps ensure that your secret is securely encrypted when it's at rest. Secrets Manager associates every secret with an AWS KMS CMK. It can be either the default CMK for Secrets Manager for the account, or a customer-created CMK.

Whenever Secrets Manager encrypts a new version of the protected secret data, Secrets Manager communicates with AWS KMS to generate a new data key from the specified CMK. Secrets Manager uses this data key for envelope encryption. Secrets Manager stores the encrypted data key with the protected secret data. Whenever the secret needs to be decrypted, Secrets Manager again communicates AWS KMS to decrypt the data key, which Secrets Manager then uses to decrypt the protected secret data. Secrets Manager never stores the data key in unencrypted form, and always disposes the data key immediately after use.

In addition, Secrets Manager, by default, only accepts requests from hosts using the open standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Perfect Forward Secrecy. This ensures that your secret is also encrypted when it's in transit between AWS and the computers used to retrieve the secret.

Automatically Rotating Your Secrets

You can configure Secrets Manager to automatically rotate your secrets without any user intervention and on a specified schedule.

You define and implement rotation with an AWS Lambda function. This function defines how Secrets Manager creates a new version of the secret, stores it in Secrets Manager, configures the protected service to use the new version. Secrets Manager then verifies the new version, and marks the new version as production ready.

Staging labels assist you with keeping track of the different versions of your secrets. Each version can have multiple staging labels attached, but a given staging label can be attached to only one version. For example, the currently active and in-use version of the secret is labeled AWSCURRENT. Your applications typically should be configured to always query for the current version of the secret. When the rotation process creates a new version of a secret, Secrets Manager automatically adds the staging label AWSPENDING to the new version until it's tested and validated. Only then does Secrets Manager move the AWSCURRENT staging label to the new version. Your applications immediately start using the new secret the next time when sending queries for the AWSCURRENT version.

Databases with Fully Configured and Ready-to-Use Rotation Support

When you choose to enable rotation, Secrets Manager supports the following Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases with written and tested Lambda rotation function templates, and full configuration of the rotation process:

Amazon Aurora on Amazon RDS
MySQL on Amazon RDS
PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS
Oracle on Amazon RDS
MariaDB on Amazon RDS
Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS

Control Access to Secrets

You can attach AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission policies to your users, groups, and roles that grant or deny access to specific secrets, and restrict what they can do with those secrets. For example, you might attach one policy to a group with members who need the ability to fully manage and configure your secrets. Another policy attached to a role used by an application might grant only read permission on the one secret that the application needs to run.

Alternatively, you can attach a resource-based policy directly to the secret and grant permissions specifying users allowed to read or modify the secret and the versions. Unlike an identity-based policy which automatically applies to the user, group, or role, a resource-based policy attached to a secret uses the Principal element to identify the policy applied to. The Principal element can include users and roles from the same account as the secret or principals from other accounts.

Compliance with Standards

AWS Secrets Manager has undergone auditing for the following standards and can be part of your solution when you need to obtain compliance certification.

	AWS has expanded its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance program to include AWS Secrets Manager as a HIPAA-eligible service. If you have an executed Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with AWS, you can use Secrets Manager to help build your HIPAA-compliant applications. AWS offers a HIPAA-focused whitepaper for customers who are interested in learning more about how they can leverage AWS for the processing and storage of health information. For more information, see HIPAA Compliance.
	AWS Secrets Manager has an Attestation of Compliance for Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) version 3.2 at Service Provider Level 1. Customers who use AWS products and services to store, process, or transmit cardholder data can use AWS Secrets Manager as they manage their own PCI DSS compliance certification. For more information about PCI DSS, including how to request a copy of the AWS PCI Compliance Package, see PCI DSS Level 1.
	AWS Secrets Manager has successfully completed compliance certification for ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018, and ISO 9001. For more information, see ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, ISO 9001.
	System and Organization Control (SOC) reports are independent third-party examination reports that demonstrate how Secrets Manager achieves key compliance controls and objectives. The purpose of these reports is to help you and your auditors understand the AWS controls that are established to support operations and compliance. For more information, see SOC Compliance.

Accessing Secrets Manager

You can work with Secrets Manager in any of the following ways:

AWS Management Console

The Secrets Manager console is a browser-based interface you can use to manage your secrets. You can perform almost any task related to your secrets by using the console.

Currently, you can't perform the following in the console:

Store binary data in a secret. The console currently only stores data in the SecretString field of the secret, and doesn't use the SecureBinary field. To store binary data, you must use the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs.

AWS Command Line Tools

The AWS command line tools allows you to issue commands at your system command line to perform Secrets Manager and other AWS tasks. This can be faster and more convenient than using the console. The command line tools can be useful if you want to build scripts to perform AWS tasks.

AWS provides two sets of command line tools: the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) and the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell. For information about installing and using the AWS CLI, see the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For information about installing and using the Tools for Windows PowerShell, see the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide.

AWS SDKs

The AWS SDKs consist of libraries and sample code for various programming languages and platforms, for example, Java, Python, Ruby, .NET, iOS and Android, and others. The SDKs include tasks such as cryptographically signing requests, managing errors, and retrying requests automatically. For more information about the AWS SDKs, including how to download and install them, see Tools for Amazon Web Services.

Secrets Manager HTTPS Query API

The Secrets Manager HTTPS Query API gives you programmatic access to Secrets Manager and AWS. The HTTPS Query API allows you to issue HTTPS requests directly to the service. When you use the HTTPS API, you must include code to digitally sign requests by using your credentials. For more information, see Calling the API by Making HTTP Query Requests and the AWS Secrets Manager API Reference.

Note

AWS recommends using the SDK specific to the programming language you prefer instead of using the HTTPS Query API. The SDK performs many useful tasks that you would perform manually. One example is that the SDKs automatically sign your requests and convert the response into a structure syntactically appropriate to your language. Use the HTTPS Query API only when an SDK isn't available.

Pricing for Secrets Manager

When you use Secrets Manager, you pay usage fees depending on how much you use , and there are no minimum or setup fees. For the current complete pricing list, see AWS Secrets Manager Pricing.

AWS KMS – Custom Encryption Keys

If you create your own customer master keys by using AWS KMS to encrypt your secrets, then you're charged at the current AWS KMS rate. However, you can use the "default" key created by AWS Secrets Manager for your account for free. For more information about the cost of customer-created AWS KMS keys, see AWS Key Management Service Pricing.

AWS CloudTrail Logging – Storage and Notification

If you enable AWS CloudTrail on your account, you can obtain logs of API calls that AWS Secrets Manager makes. Secrets Manager logs all events as management events. There are no data events. There's no additional charge for capturing a single trail in AWS CloudTrail to capture management events. The first copy of all management events is stored in that trail for free. However, you can incur charges for Amazon S3 for log storage and for Amazon SNS if you enable notification. Also, if you set up additional trails, the additional copies of management events can incur costs. For more information, see the AWS CloudTrail pricing page.

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