How to create an Azure key vault and manage access policies in the portal.

Is your organization currently using a vault manager to store cryptographic keys, secrets and certificates? Are you satisfied with its performance and security features? If not, then this blog post is for you.

In this blog post, I will explain what Azure key vault is, why is it important, and how to create it in the Azure portal.

What is Azure key vault?

• Azure key vault is a cloud native tool that allows you to store your cryptographic keys, secrets and certificates securely in a centralized location. Azure key vault was designed to help organizations safeguard their sensitive information and ensures only authorized users can access this data through a secure API.

Why is Azure key vault important?

• In today’s world, everything has become more agile and fast. The developer wants to publish his code in a secure and timely manner. The IT administrator wants to make sure that all the cryptographic keys for encryption or decryption are accessible securely when needed. And with the increasing number of cyber-attacks, it’s very important for organizations to ensure the security of their data. Azure key vault provides a secure and reliable way to store sensitive data and protect organizations from being compromised.

Before I show a demo, let’s get familiar with some of the key terms that you will come across when creating a key vault in Azure:

• Soft delete: Soft delete protection is a feature that allows you to recover a deleted key, secret or certificate for the duration of the retention period which can be 7 to 90 days. This feature provides an extra layer of protection against any accidental deletion of the key vault.
• Purge Protection: Purge protection provides an extra layer of protection against accidental deletion of your keys, secrets, and certificates. When enabled, the deleted item from key vault cannot be permanently deleted even after the retention period for soft delete has expired.
• Vault access policy: A permission model to grant access to keys, secrets, or certificates. For example, giving an administrator “Get” permissions to the secrets in the key vault which allows the administrator to retrieve the value of any secret within the key vault.
• Role-based access control: A permission model that allows you to grant RBAC roles at the vault level. In other words, if you don’t want a user to have permissions over all keys, secrets, or certificates. You can assign an RBAC role at the vault level to grant access to only a specific key, secret or certificate.
• Networking (Public access): Public access allows you to connect to the key vault either publicly from the internet or from selected networks using a public IP address. (Not recommended for Private applications or environments)
• Networking (Private endpoint): Private endpoint allows you to access the key vault over a private IP address using a private virtual network in Azure. (Recommended)

Now let’s watch how to create an Azure key vault in this demo video:

In conclusion, Azure key vault is a powerful cloud native service that can provide a centralized location for storing and managing your organization’s keys, secrets and certificates. With Azure key vault, organizations can have the confidence that their sensitive data is secured and monitored with features such as access policies, RBAC, auditing and versioning.