Secrets Management

Secrets management is the practice of keeping credentials out of code and configuration and in a dedicated store - a vault or key-management service - that issues them narrowly, rotates them, and logs their use. It exists because hard-coded, over-shared secrets are among the most common and damaging security failures.

Agents make secrets management acute: an agent that holds broad, long-lived credentials becomes a single point that inherits everything those keys can do. Holding the keys at the gateway instead - and handing an agent only a scoped, short-lived credential for the task at hand - means a compromised agent cannot widen its own access, and every use of a secret is adjudicated and recorded.