Secrets

Deep workflow for secrets lifecycle—classification, storage (Vault/KMS/cloud), rotation, least privilege, developer ergonomics, audit, and incident response. Use when removing hardcoded secrets, designing secret backends, CI/CD secret injection, or reviewing secret handling in code and infra.

Secrets Management (Deep Workflow)

Guide the user through end-to-end secrets governance: what counts as a secret, where it may live, how it is injected and rotated, who can access what, and how misuse is detected. Act as a structured reviewer and architect, not a checklist robot.

When to Offer This Workflow

Trigger conditions:

• User mentions API keys, tokens, passwords, TLS private keys, signing keys, OAuth client secrets, DB credentials, or “hardcoded secret”
• Designing Vault/KMS/Parameter Store/Secrets Manager integration
• CI/CD needs secrets; local dev vs prod parity questions
• Audit/compliance asks for access logs or rotation evidence

Initial offer:

Explain you will use five stages: (1) inventory & classification, (2) storage & access model, (3) lifecycle & rotation, (4) developer & CI ergonomics, (5) verification & ongoing operations. Ask if they want this full pass or a narrower slice (e.g., “rotate one class of keys”).

If they decline the workflow, help freeform but still flag non-negotiables: no long-lived secrets in git, minimize blast radius, auditable access.

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Stage 1: Inventory & Classification

Goal: Know what exists, where it is, who needs it, and blast radius if leaked.

Questions to Ask

1. What environments exist (local, staging, prod, partner)? Are boundaries strict?
2. What secret types are in scope: symmetric keys, asymmetric private keys, bearer tokens, DB passwords, cloud IAM, third-party API keys?
3. Where might secrets already be duplicated (repos, wikis, tickets, Slack, laptops)?
4. What compliance or contractual constraints apply (PCI, SOC2, customer DPAs)?

Actions

• Build a rough inventory table: secret class → consumers → storage today → rotation frequency → owner team.
• Explicitly hunt high-risk items: signing keys, encryption-at-rest master keys, long-lived admin credentials, cross-env reuse.
• Call out anti-patterns: secrets in env files committed to git, shared “team password”, same DB password everywhere.

Exit Condition

User can name owners for each critical class and agrees on classification (public / internal / confidential / regulated).

Transition: Move to choosing storage and access patterns that match classification and scale.

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Stage 2: Storage & Access Model

Goal: Pick mechanisms so secrets are encrypted at rest, scoped, and auditable.

Design Points

• Central secret store vs cloud-native (e.g., Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager, Azure Key Vault) vs KMS-only patterns.
• Identity binding: runtime identity (IAM role, K8s service account, workload identity) vs static tokens.
• Encryption paths: envelope encryption, KMS CMKs, HSM requirements for signing keys.
• Namespaces / paths: logical isolation per team, app, environment; avoid global buckets.

Trade-offs to Surface

• Latency & availability: secret fetch on startup vs sidecar vs CSI driver; failure modes when store is down.
• Break-glass: who can decrypt in emergency, with what approval and logging.
• Multi-region: replication, failover, and consistency for secret references.

Exit Condition

A written access model: principals → permissions → secret paths → justification. No “everyone read/write production.”

Transition: Define how secrets change over time and how old values are retired safely.

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Stage 3: Lifecycle & Rotation

Goal: Secrets expire, rotate, and revoke without surprise outages.

Workflow

1. Rotation policy per class: automatic vs manual, max age, overlap window.
2. Dual-credential periods when services must accept both old and new during rollout.
3. Revocation: immediate invalidation paths for compromise (API key disable, cert CRL, session kill).
4. Bootstrap: how the first secret gets to runtime in a new environment without chicken-and-egg (e.g., cloud IAM → fetch others).

Pitfalls to Call Out

• Rotating DB password without connection pool drain → thundering reconnect failures.
• Clients caching JWT signing keys without key ID rotation support.
• Secrets embedded in container images or build artifacts.

Exit Condition

User has a rotation runbook outline and knows order of operations for at least one critical path.

Transition: Make the model usable for engineers daily without encouraging leaks.

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Stage 4: Developer & CI Ergonomics

Goal: Correct behavior is the default; wrong behavior is hard or blocked.

Practices

• Local dev: short-lived dev credentials, personal sandboxes, .env.example without values, secret scanners in pre-commit/CI.
• CI: OIDC to cloud (no long-lived cloud keys in CI secrets if avoidable), scoped tokens, environment-specific secrets.
• Code review: patterns for “secret passed as parameter,” logging redaction, error messages that leak tokens.

Tooling Mentions (when relevant)

• Git secret scanning (e.g., gitleaks, trufflehog), dependency on org policy.
• Dynamic secrets / database roles if using Vault-style patterns.

Exit Condition

Clear developer story: “I clone repo → I authenticate → I get least-privilege creds → I never paste prod keys locally unless policy allows.”

Transition: Prove the design works and stays healthy over time.

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Stage 5: Verification & Operations

Goal: Evidence that controls work; readiness when things go wrong.

Verification

• Drills: restore from backup of secret metadata (if applicable), rotate in staging with full integration tests.
• Audit review: sample access logs; alert on anomalous read patterns.
• Incident: playbook for “credential leaked on GitHub” — revoke order, scope, customer comms if needed.

Metrics / Signals (examples)

• Failed authentication spikes after rotation
• Secret fetch error rates from apps
• Time-to-revoke for a simulated leak

Exit Condition

User can answer: “If this key leaks at 3am, what is step 1–5 and who is paged?”

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Final Review Checklist

• No production secrets in source control or public artifacts
• Least privilege enforced at identity + path + operation level
• Rotation and revocation paths documented with owners
• CI and local dev paths do not encourage static prod credentials
• Audit/logging aligned with organizational requirements

Tips for Effective Guidance

• Prefer concrete sequences (bootstrap → fetch → use → rotate) over abstract “use a vault.”
• Always ask blast radius and who can decrypt.
• When user lacks org context, give options with trade-offs, not a single vendor gospel.

Handling Deviations

• “We only need one API key”: still classify, store centrally, and set expiry where possible.
• “Too heavy for our stage”: minimum viable—env per env, secret manager, scanner on CI, no keys in repo.