Secrets Management is one of the most critical yet overlooked aspects of security in modern environments. Many Security Programs still do not have a proper Secret Management Plan, or, when they do, they consist of a common strategy to Centralize everything on a single source of truth.
And it makes sense, it means it is easier to provide access, and to audit if ever this is needed. Plus, it helps with upskilling, as only one system is really needed to be learnt and supported by the team. It also, theoretically, helps with Secret Sprawl - a phenomenon where the same sensitive data is replicated across different places (thus, making it harder to rotate, control access, etc.).
However, it is commonly not possible to keep only one single instance of stateful sensitive-data storage. For instance, Kubernetes Operators and Controllers frequently require Kubernetes Secrets to function correctly, making it difficult to eliminate them altogether. Similarly, CI tools like GitHub Actions / Chef have their own stateful concept for distributing secrets across multiple pipelines, ensuring automation and orchestration workflows remain intact. Worse than that, even if we build perfect systems that are fully centralized on a single Secrets Provider, users will more often than not just copy-paste whatever the value they have for one application into another - within the same Secret Provider.
Sometimes, the reason might be even more subtle - a compliance need for segregation of environments - thus needing one secret storage for development and one secret storage for production.
These challenges make Secret Sprawl inevitable. This realization (although not explicit at that time) is the reason why https://external-secrets.io was born. As opposed to trying to eliminate secret Sprawl by itself, it allows for an easy-to-use replication interface - whenever something changed on a given source (the “source of truth”), replicate it to the Kubernetes storage. This makes it easier to maintain Secrets in Kubernetes, and allows for very restrictive authorization strategies within clusters.
What if we could bring this same approach everywhere?
A Different Approach: Managing Secret Sprawl Instead of Reducing It
Instead of attempting to eliminate secret sprawl, a more practical approach is to manage it effectively. External Secrets Enterprise helps organizations track and manage secrets across multiple stores. By offering visibility into secret duplication, last rotation timestamps, and access patterns, it empowers teams to maintain control over their secrets without enforcing rigid centralization policies.
With External Secrets Enterprise, organizations can:
- Identify duplicate secrets across multiple providers.
- Detect secrets that haven’t been rotated within a specific timeframe.
- Monitor access patterns to ensure secrets are being used securely and efficiently.
- Automatically propagate value changes to the right targets.
One of the most powerful features of External Secrets Enterprise is the support for custom Policies evaluated on each new audit log entry. For example, the following policy detects all secret duplicates cannot belong to different environments ( development and production), ensuring sensitive credentials remain properly segregated and managed:
package main
import rego.v1
import externalsecrets.v1alpha1
default allow := false
## Allows if there are no duplicates
allow if {
len(input.Duplicates) == 0
}
## Checks if all duplicates are from the same environment
allow if {
provider_id := input.ProviderId
count({x | input.Duplicates[x]; same_environment(input.Duplicates[x],provider_id)}) == len(input.Duplicates)
}
## Checks if the providers are from the same environment based on an 'environment' tag
same_environment(key,base) if {
duplicate_tags := provider_tags(key.Provider)
base_tags := provider_tags(base)
duplicate_tags['environment'] == base_tags['environment']
}
With this policy, not only you’ll get alerts of your current Secret Estate, but also whenever there is a violation (a secret is copied over between development and production) - all of that via Events on audit logs - no dependencies on polling mechanisms.
This approach helps organizations enforce consistency in secret management while providing flexibility to define policies tailored to their specific security and compliance needs.
Conclusion
Secrets Management is a complex challenge, and Secret Sprawl is an unavoidable reality in modern environments. Instead of enforcing strict centralization, External Secrets Enterprise provides a set of tools that gives you a powerful way to manage, track, and secure Secrets across multiple solutions - making this a future-proof solution. Whether this is a compliance requirement you face or not - this approach helps developers confidently operate sensitive data across their applications, clearly knowing underlying dependencies between them, reducing downtime risks.
If you’re looking for a solution to help you manage secret sprawl in your enterprise environment, External Secrets Enterprise is the perfect solution. With its powerful features and flexible policies, you can easily track, manage, and secure secrets across multiple solutions.
Book a call to learn more about External Secrets Enterprise and how it can help you improve your security posture.
