Introduction to HashiCorp Security
HashiCorp provides a suite of tools that enable organizations to implement secure infrastructure as code, secrets management, and service networking.
Vault: Enterprise Secrets Management
HashiCorp Vault is a tool for securely accessing secrets. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys.
Core Capabilities
- Secret Storage: Securely store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, encryption keys, and other sensitive data.
- Dynamic Secrets: Generate on-demand credentials for services and databases. These credentials are short-lived and automatically revoked.
- Data Encryption: Encrypt and decrypt data without storing it, allowing applications to encrypt data without managing encryption keys.
Consul: Service Mesh Security
HashiCorp Consul is a service networking solution that enables organizations to secure service-to-service communication with automatic TLS encryption, identity-based authorization, and intention-based security policies.
Key Security Features
- Service Identity: Every service in your mesh is assigned a unique TLS certificate that serves as its identity.
- Mutual TLS (mTLS): All service-to-service communication is encrypted using mutual TLS.
- Service Intentions: Define which services are allowed to communicate with each other.
Conclusion
By combining Vault and Consul, organizations can achieve robust enterprise security that is both highly automated and deeply integrated with modern application architectures and workflows.