Automating secrets management with Doppler

Automating secrets management with Doppler

Secret rotation is one of the most important and often overlooked parts of secrets management. While storing and syncing secrets is a great first step, keeping them secure over time requires regular updates. Many teams put off rotation because of complexity, downtime risk, or lack of automation tools. But skipping it increases the likelihood of a credential leak or misuse.

This chapter focuses on how Doppler helps teams automate rotation at scale, reduce operational risk, and meet compliance requirements without disrupting deployments.

Why rotation matters

Secrets, like passwords, become more vulnerable the longer they stay the same. A leaked API key or an unrotated database credential can create major security risks. Many compliance frameworks, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001, treat rotation as a core requirement for secure infrastructure.

Still, rotation is often neglected due to:

• Limited internal security expertise
• Concerns about downtime during credential changes
• The complexity of managing credentials across multiple clouds and systems
• Lack of tooling to automate and monitor the process

Doppler makes secure rotation approachable and achievable for teams of all sizes.

Built-in rotation for common secrets

On the Team and Enterprise plans, Doppler supports automatic rotation for common credential types, including:

• Database credentials
• IAM user keys
• API keys

These values can be rotated on a schedule or on demand. Once updated, Doppler syncs the new secrets to the systems that need them. With integrations in place, rotated values are injected automatically into your environments without downtime or manual updates.

Proxied and API-based rotation models

Doppler offers two models for secret rotation depending on your infrastructure and security requirements.

API-based rotation, available on the Team and Enterprise plans, uses provider APIs to rotate secrets like access keys or tokens. This method is ideal for cloud-native services and is easy to configure.

Proxied rotation, available on the Enterprise plan, is designed for teams with private infrastructure. It uses an open source, serverless agent that runs inside your network, giving Doppler secure access to rotate secrets for internal systems such as on-prem databases without exposing them to the public internet. The proxy is fully controlled by your team and can be deployed using your existing cloud environment.

The two-secret strategy

Doppler supports a two-secret rotation strategy, alternating between active and inactive credentials during each rotation cycle. This gives systems time to switch over to the new secret before the old one is removed.

By overlapping credentials during rotation, teams can avoid interruptions, reduce risk, and roll out changes more confidently.

Rotation and compliance

Automated rotation helps enforce security policies and meet compliance frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA. Doppler records every rotation event in the activity log, creating a reliable audit trail for security reviews or incident response.

By making rotation part of the default workflow, teams can maintain compliance without slowing down development or requiring extra overhead.

Next: Wrapping it all up

From centralizing secrets and managing teams to integrating with CI/CD and automating rotation, Doppler is built to help you scale securely. In the final chapter, we’ll recap key strategies and explore how to turn these best practices into long-term systems for secret operations.