Case Study: Unifying Secrets Management Across Cloud Providers

Client & Context

A large enterprise client operating in the public sector approached us with a complex challenge: managing secrets securely across multiple cloud environments. Their infrastructure spanned AWS, Azure, and GCP, with each platform using its own native secrets storage solution. This created inconsistencies in how credentials were generated, rotated, and accessed, resulting in operational overhead and increased security risk.

The client needed a centralized, cloud-agnostic approach to secrets management that could work seamlessly across all their environments while maintaining strict compliance and auditability.

Objectives

The primary goal was to standardize secrets management for all applications and environments. The client wanted to:

• Eliminate fragmented secrets handling across clouds

• Improve visibility and control over credentials

• Automate secrets rotation and access policies

• Strengthen their overall security posture

Challenges

Managing secrets in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment had become increasingly difficult. Each cloud provider offered its own approach to secrets, and teams often built ad-hoc solutions that led to duplication and drift. Rotations were manual, access policies inconsistent, and compliance reporting cumbersome. Developers struggled to maintain a clear view of where secrets were stored or who had access to them.

These issues not only slowed down delivery but also introduced potential security vulnerabilities and audit risks.

Our Approach

We implemented HashiCorp Vault as a unified secrets management platform across AWS, Azure, and GCP. The goal was to provide a single, secure source of truth for all application credentials, independent of the underlying cloud provider.

We began by integrating Vault with the client's existing cloud IAM systems, enabling seamless authentication using native identities from each environment. This allowed applications and users to obtain dynamic credentials through short-lived tokens instead of static keys.

Terraform was used to codify Vault's configuration, ensuring that policies, authentication methods, and secret engines were defined centrally and version-controlled. This made the entire setup visible, reproducible, and easy to audit.

By leveraging Vault's dynamic secrets capability, credentials for databases and APIs could now be automatically generated and rotated without manual intervention. Access was granted just-in-time, reducing the attack surface significantly.

Finally, audit logging was configured across all clouds, giving the client real-time insights into who accessed what, when, and from where. This ensured full traceability for compliance purposes.

Outcomes

The client successfully consolidated secrets management across AWS, Azure, and GCP into a single, consistent system. The new approach eliminated redundant configurations and simplified access control across teams. Credential rotation became fully automated, reducing operational overhead and eliminating the need for manual intervention.

Security posture improved dramatically, secrets were no longer tied to specific clouds, and all access was governed by centralized policies. Developers gained a unified workflow, while compliance teams benefited from complete visibility and auditability of all secret-related activity.

Key Lessons Learned

A cloud-agnostic secrets platform reduces complexity in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Automation of secrets lifecycle management is key to minimizing human error. Centralized visibility provides not just better control but faster incident response.

Conclusion

By implementing Vault as a unified secrets management layer, we helped the client standardize security practices across diverse cloud environments. The result was a stronger, more resilient security foundation with reduced operational friction proving that even in multi-cloud setups, simplicity and security can go hand in hand.