🔐 Shift-Right Secrets Management: Dynamic Vault + Cloud Secret Store for Compliance

🧩 Modern Compliance Meets DevSecOps

In regulated cloud environments, compliance isn’t just about protecting data — it’s about proving operational control and resilience.Traditional DevOps pipelines often handle secrets too early — injected during build, stored in repositories, or baked into images. This creates long-lived credentials and increases compliance risk.

In this Dev2Prod demo, we demonstrate a Shift-Right approach: secrets are delivered only at runtime, dynamically, and per service. This guarantees:

• Least-privilege access

• Traceability and auditability

• Zero static secrets in pipelines or images

⚙️ Architecture Overview

environment combines:

• HashiCorp Vault – issues dynamic credentials for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc.

• AWS Secret Manager / Azure Key Vault / GCP Secret Manager – stores static secrets (API keys, tokens) per namespace.

• External Secrets Operator (ESO) – securely injects both static and dynamic secrets into workloads.

• Vault Agent Sidecar – handles authentication, token lifecycle, and secret renewal.

• Kustomize Overlays – manage non-sensitive configuration (hostnames, ports, feature flags) per environment.

🧠 Result: Secrets are short-lived, auditable, and isolated, while non-sensitive configs are version-controlled in GitOps workflows.

✅ Compliance Highlights

Framework	Control / Requirement	Implementation	Benefit
ISO 27001:2022	A.9.2.3 – Privileged Access	Vault generates dynamic credentials per service account	Least privilege enforced; no static credentials
	A.10.1 – Cryptography	Vault & cloud secret store encrypt at rest	Protects sensitive info in storage & transit
	A.12.4.1 – Logging & Monitoring	Vault Agent & ESO log secret access	Auditable evidence for compliance
PCI DSS v4.0	3.4 – Protect stored credentials	Secrets never in plaintext; ephemeral DB creds	Reduces risk of data compromise
	7.1 – Restrict access need-to-know	Vault policies & ESO RBAC	Access scoped to namespace / pod
HIPAA §164.312	(a)(2)(iv) – Unique ID	Ephemeral credentials per pod	Prevents credential reuse
	(e)(1) – Transmission security	TLS between Vault, ESO, and pods	Protects secrets in transit
GDPR Art. 32	Security of processing	Dynamic secrets, scoped per namespace	Minimizes personal data exposure
NIST SP 800-53 Rev5	AC-6 – Least privilege	Vault & ESO per namespace/service account	Each service gets only needed secrets
	SC-28 – Info at rest	Vault & cloud secret store encrypt	Confidentiality maintained
	AU-2 / AU-12 – Audit events	Vault & ESO logs all access	Supports compliance reporting