Our applications today need to interface and communicate with many different services, and often times even get authenticated using them. This means that just to be able to function in a modern cloud native system, applications needs to store and use sensitive data constantly — such as passwords, access keys, certificates (among other private keys) — and these sensitive keys have become a core part of the code we write.
We learned a long time ago that we can’t have hard-coded secrets, and that’s where tools like HashiCorp Vault have come into play.
From API keys to sensitive credentials, secrets management is a non-negotiable standard today. But although we know it’s important, keeping secrets secure while maintaining agility is a challenge for modern DevOps and platform engineers.
As a tool, Vault has been integrated deeply into infrastructure management workflows like Terraform. And Vault’s Terraform provider, with over 347 million downloads, highlights the need for robust secrets management as part of Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This major milestone tells us not only how frequently organizations rely on Vault to safeguard their environments, but also signals something bigger.
Let’s explore just how necessary it is to manage Vault as code— not just to secure secrets, but to ensure that managing secrets is part of a scalable, repeatable, and automated process.
Vault-as-Code: Beyond Traditional Secrets Management
Vault's real strength isn’t just about storing secrets; it’s about managing them programmatically.
This concept of Vault-as-Code allows teams to treat secrets management like any other part of their infrastructure. By using tools like Terraform, secrets policies, access controls, and configurations are codified, versioned, and automated in a way that manual workflows simply cannot match.
In cloud environments, this approach offers several key benefits:
- Consistency: Vault-as-Code ensures that all environments—whether development, staging, or production—are using the same configurations.
- Traceability: Changes to Vault settings are versioned, just like any other code, providing clear audit trails and minimizing security gaps.
- Scalability: As cloud footprints grow, managing secrets across environments becomes more complex. Vault-as-Code helps teams keep pace without creating bottlenecks in the deployment pipeline.
The takeaway? Secrets management isn’t just about security—it’s about making secrets management part of the automation and scalability story.
Firefly helps make this easier by integrating Vault-as-Code into broader infrastructure automation, reducing friction and ensuring secure, scalable deployments without manual overhead.
The Pain of Manual Secrets Management
Managing secrets manually in cloud environments can quickly turn into a nightmare. Hardcoded credentials scattered across different repositories, manual configuration changes that don't scale, and limited visibility into who is accessing sensitive data are just a few of the issues teams face.
Here are a few common pain points of manual secrets management:
Lack of Visibility
When secrets are handled manually, it’s hard to track who has access to what, leaving teams exposed to potential leaks or unauthorized access.
Error-Prone Processes
With manual management, even a small mistake—such as misconfiguring access policies or failing to rotate keys—can result in vulnerabilities that are difficult to detect and mitigate.
Scaling Challenges
As teams add new environments and services, managing secrets without automation can slow down deployment processes and introduce security risks.
These issues make it clear: secrets management needs to evolve beyond manual processes. Vault-as-Code offers a structured, automated way to handle secrets, reducing human error and allowing for seamless scaling across environments.
Why You Should Manage Vault-as-Code
Treating your secrets management-as-code isn’t just a best practice—it’s a way to future-proof your infrastructure. By integrating Vault with your existing IaC workflows, you ensure that secrets management is automated, scalable, and traceable.
More Automation: Vault-as-Code removes the need for manual intervention, allowing secrets policies and configurations to be managed just like any other infrastructure component.
Better Security: By managing secrets through code, access policies are standardized and less prone to human error. Automating key rotations and access control changes ensures that your infrastructure stays secure, even as it scales.
Improved Efficiency: Instead of configuring Vault settings manually for each environment, you can automate the process across the board, freeing up your team to focus on more critical tasks.
With Firefly, you get a platform that not only supports this approach but enhances it—helping you manage Vault configurations and track changes in real time, all while maintaining security and compliance standards.
See Secrets Management-as-Code in Action
Vault-as-Code is the key to unlocking secure, scalable infrastructure in today's multi-cloud world. By integrating Vault with your existing IaC workflows, you ensure consistency, reduce manual overhead, and improve visibility into secrets management.
Ready to see how managing Vault-as-Code can transform your cloud infrastructure?
Sign up for a demo with Firefly and see first-hand how we can help automate and optimize your secrets management process.
Or, explore how Firefly can help you embrace the everything-as-code movement on your own time.
