Choosing a secrets manager for multi-cloud: Doppler vs. cloud-native tools

TL;DR

Cloud-native secrets managers are insufficient to solve many of the everyday challenges of the multi-cloud environment, like cross-compatibility, configuration drift, and duplicate secrets. Doppler solves these issues with features like secrets referencing, integrating with other secrets management solutions, branch configs, and more.

Modernizing security practices is complicated

Modern development requirements continue to change. The adoption of cloud computing, integration of additional microservices, and introduction of hybrid and remote work environments are altering the development landscape. Adopting new tools and best practices is exciting, but it makes secrets management harder. Traditional, self-hosted secrets managers tend to be unwieldy and static. They require significant developer and IT resources to design, create, and maintain effectively. Instead, many teams choose professional secrets management solutions to secure their development environment.

Professional secrets management solutions are diverse in their offerings. Some secrets managers are little more than vaults for storing values, making necessary modern security techniques like automated rotation challenging. Others, like the more robust cloud-native secrets management solutions, lack the cross-compatibility necessary to facilitate multi-cloud environments.

Let’s take a look at what a cloud-native secrets management solution is, what some of its biggest challenges might be, and the purpose-built tool that integrates the solution quickly and easily for you, so you can secure your secrets without compromise.

What are cloud-native secrets managers?

Major cloud providers, like Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (GCP), come with their own built-in secrets management services (AWS Secret Manager, Azure Key Vault, and Google Secrets Manager, respectively) referred to as cloud-native secrets managers. These solutions are ready-made and quick to implement for platforms utilizing their respective cloud provider.

Within their cloud providers’ environments, cloud-native secrets managers are effective and secure. There’s a trade-off here, though. Cloud-native secrets managers don’t integrate with one another or with other cloud providers, making them unwieldy for enterprise secrets management in a multi-cloud environment.

There are plenty of benefits to using multi-cloud environments, like avoiding vendor lock-in, but it introduces new challenges that cloud-native and traditional secrets management solutions aren’t built to address. Let’s take a look:

Secrets management challenges in multi-cloud environments

Multiple configurations

Each additional cloud requires configuration work from developers, and even with a robust infrastructure as code (IaC) framework, this can take significant time, every time. Compounding this frustration is that new configurations may be similar to previous iterations hosted by a different cloud provider, but porting the configuration over is not a viable solution.

Cross-compatibility

Complex migration and portability mechanisms, or lack thereof, further hindered by a lack of integration support from cloud-native solutions, means the addition of or migration to a new cloud environment takes time, effort, and skilled labor, and still introduces security risks associated with manual actions.

Duplicate secrets

Due to the complexity of cross-compatibility and the need for multiple configurations, secrets sprawl and accidental duplication of secrets become a significant threat. Tracking down every instance of duplicate secrets for rotation is a tedious waste of time, and losing track of duplicate secrets is a significant security threat.

Configuration drift

As applications and cloud providers grow, change, and adapt, configuration settings may also gradually change. This natural process is referred to as configuration drift and can cause significant issues down the line if configuration alteration is not properly tracked or addressed.

Auditing

With growing complexity and no central solution, keeping track of the audit information necessary for compliance regulations and industry certifications becomes an additional, and more challenging chore.

These issues only grow with each new cloud. Effectively managing secrets in a multi-cloud environment at the enterprise level requires a centralized solution that integrates and operates in every cloud environment.

Doppler is built to solve these issues

Doppler provides workflows for solving modern secrets management challenges and was designed to operate in multi-cloud environments at any scale.

1. Branch configs: Create an altered version of a root environment without altering the root itself! Branch configs allow for uniquely configuring the same application in production across multiple clouds, reducing the strain of configuring a new cloud environment.
2. Secrets Referencing: Avoid duplicating secrets across your workplace by referring to a single global instance stored in Doppler. Coupled with branch configs, this allows for the syncing of secrets across clouds and integrated cloud-native secrets managers.
3. Integrations: Doppler integrates with cloud-native secrets managers, including AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secrets Manager, and Azure Key Vault, to keep secrets synced and up to date across each provider, and between providers.
4. Search by value: Doppler easily locates all instances of secrets currently in use, across multiple clouds.
5. Comparing secrets: Can be used to track configuration drift between environments and different clouds.
6. Automated secrets rotation: Achievable for every team and application, with support for database credentials, IAM User Keys, API keys, and more. Automated secrets rotation is a necessary security feature for many compliance regulations and certifications, and Doppler’s enterprise solution works across environments and cloud providers.
7. Centralized audit logs: By storing secrets with Doppler, tracking and auditing the use of secrets can be done in a central location, regardless of the secret’s location. The dashboard is intuitive, making audit information robust and accessible.

There are plenty of reasons to adopt Doppler as your secrets management solution in the short term, but it will also pay dividends for years down the line. Doppler’s dedicated team of engineers is constantly working on updates and new integrations to make sure the platform always delivers, especially as cloud services and development tools update in the future. Instead of spending time maintaining your systems, let Doppler handle it for you.

Jump over to our documentation section for a great video series about just how easy it is to implement Doppler into your workflow. If you want to learn more, explore deeper with a free demo!

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