Creating connections across many systems is a common requirement while designing apps. This could be to an API with access to specific metadata, a database, or the user profile. Usually, your application will need to authenticate itself in order to achieve this. How does your application get access to the login credentials needed to make this happen? It is bad practice to use unencrypted configuration files or to store credentials straight into code. Therefore, secure credential management is essential to the development of proper applications.
We are going to explore AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store and AWS Secrets Manager, two alternatives for credential management on the well-known Amazon Web Services platform, in this post. You will be able to decide which of them is a better option by reading further.
What is AWS parameter store?
An AWS Systems Manager feature called Parameter Store offers safe, hierarchical storage for managing secrets and configuration data. As parameter values, you can store information like license codes, passwords, database strings, and Amazon Machine Image (AMI) IDs. Values can be stored as encrypted data or as plain text. By using the distinct name you gave the parameter when you generated it, you can refer to Systems Manager parameters in your scripts, commands, SSM documents, and configuration and automation workflows. Open the Systems Manager console to begin using the Parameter Store. Select Parameter Store from the navigation pane.
Features of AWS Parameter Store
Change Notification
It is possible to set up automated actions and change notifications for both parameters and parameter policies. See Triggering actions or setting up notifications based on Parameter Store events for further details.
Organize parameters
To assist you in identifying one or more parameters based on the tags you've assigned to them, you can tag each of your parameters separately. You can tag parameters, for instance, for particular departments or settings. See Tagging Systems Manager settings for further details.
Label versions
By defining labels, you can associate an alias for several versions of your parameter. When there are several variants of a parameter, labels might aid in your memory of its intended use.
Data Validation
It is possible to build parameters that reference an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. When you do so, Parameter Store verifies that the resource exists, that the resource type is expected, and that the user has authorization to use it. To ensure that the parameter value satisfies the formatting requirements for an AMI ID and that the specified AMI is available in your AWS account, for instance, you can create a parameter with an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID as a value with the data type aws:ec2:image. Parameter Store then conducts an asynchronous validation operation.
What is AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager was released by Amazon Web Services in 2018. You can safeguard access to your apps, services, and IT resources with the use of this service. Throughout their lifecycle, you can effortlessly rotate, manage, and recover API keys, database credentials, and other secrets using this service. The secrets used to access resources on-premises, on third-party services, and in the AWS cloud may be managed, audited, and secured with the help of Secrets Manager.
Features of AWS Secrets Manager
Developers may encrypt data both in transit and at rest and store their secrets in S3 on AWS. As we are all too aware, things in AWS change and develop swiftly. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store debuted first. Ideal for storing parameters, secrets, and configuration data, Parameter Store is a controlled and encrypted key/value store. Subsequently, AWS unveiled Secrets Manager in April 2018, which provides comparable features. What are their similarities and how do they differ from each other?
AWS Secrets Manager vs AWS Systems Parameter Store: The similarities
Developers might store their trade secrets in S3 on AWS and encrypt their data both in transit and at rest. Things in AWS move and change quickly, as we are all too familiar with. Parameter Store is an ideal key/value store that is maintained and secured for storing configuration data, secrets, and parameters. Subsequently, in April 2018, Amazon revealed Secrets Manager, which provides comparable features. What are the differences and similarities between them, then?
Encryption
Let's start with encryption. AWS KMS is used by AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store to encrypt data. KMS is a managed service that makes data encryption simple. You can govern the encryption of stored data across AWS services and encrypt data within your own apps with AWS KMS, which offers highly available key storage, administration, and auditing.
You can use policies to manage permissions on which IAM users and roles have the ability to decrypt the value using KMS and IAM. Therefore, a key aspect of Parameter Store and Secrets Manager is the ease with which secrets can be encrypted. You can manage who has access to your secrets just with IAM. Is encryption just one more way to protect your secrets? Yes, it is possible, but what if keeping your secrets encrypted is necessary for compliance? That is, it comes pre-installed with either Secrets Manager or Parameter Store.
Key/Value Store
Managed key/value storage services represent yet another significant similarity. You can save values under a name or key with either service. Additionally, your keys may have prefixes, and they both have values up to 4096 characters in storage. The ability for both of these systems to communicate with AWS CloudFormation is the last similarity I'll discuss. Because CloudFormation is infrastructure as code, it is important to keep in mind that keeping secrets in CloudFormation Templates is a terrible practice and should be avoided in favor of Parameter Store or Secrets Manager.
CloudFormation Integration
Keeping secrets in CloudFormation is not a good security practice, even when it is utilized as an Infrastructure as a code (IaC) model. Instead of having the secrets in plaintext in your template, you can store the secrets (such as the password and username for your database) in Parameter Store or Secrets Manager and reference them from there. This way, all you'll have to do is have a pointer to the value in your template.
Versioning
Versioning of secret values is supported by both services. In case you wanted them, you can access earlier iterations of your secret settings thanks to this. You have the option to go back to the previous iteration of the parameter.
One version of the parameter may only be active at any one moment according to Parameter Store.
When doing a secret rotation with the stage labels, Secrets Manager permits several versions to exist simultaneously.
AWS Secrets Manager vs AWS Systems Parameter Store: The differences
Costs
Secrets Manager: It's paid. The monthly storage fee is $0.40 per secret, and the cost of API interactions is $0.05 for every 10,000 API requests.
Parameter Store: For Standard parameters, No additional charge for storage and standard throughput. The cost of an API interaction is $0.05 for every 10,000 API requests for higher throughput.
The monthly storage cost for advanced parameters is $0.05, while the cost of API interactions is $0.05 for every 10,000 API calls.
Secrets Rotation
Secrets Manager: It allows you to swap secrets whenever you want and may be set up to rotate on a regular basis based on your needs. With a few AWS services, like RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB, it offers complete key rotation integration. AWS Lambda functions let you create custom key rotation logic for other applications.
Parameter Store: You can create your own function and use either Eventbridge or a scheduled event in CloudWatch to invoke it when the credentials are updated.
Cross account Access
Secrets Manager: Another AWS account can be used to access secrets. Cross-account sharing of secrets is simpler. This helps in use cases where a customer needs to communicate a specific secret with a partner or if secrets are centrally controlled from another AWS account.
Parameter Store: Not supported.
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Conclusion
In this blog, we examined and contrasted Parameter Store and Secrets Manager as possible credential-management options. You can manage credentials more effectively with the aid of both services, especially if you use hierarchical naming standards. Both solutions provide monitoring capabilities that allow you to keep track of which programs are using which credentials.
However, if cost is your main focus, it's wise to start with the Parameter Store Standard tier. Conversely, Secrets Manager is most likely a better choice if fulfilling your compliance requirements is crucial. This is because it has the ability to replicate credentials to several AWS regions, offers automated credential rotation, and provides recovery periods for deleted credentials. Furthermore, the only program specifically created to manage credentials is Secrets Manager.
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