HashiCorp Vault

What it is

HashiCorp Vault is an identity-based secrets management platform for storing, generating and tightly controlling access to API keys, passwords, certificates, encryption keys and other sensitive data. Teams run Vault Community Edition themselves, upgrade to Vault Enterprise for advanced operations, or use managed HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) Vault offerings.

What it helps with

- Centralising secrets so credentials are not hard-coded in apps, configs or chat.
- Authenticating humans, machines and services before issuing short-lived or dynamic credentials.
- Encrypting data in transit and at rest with Vault as an encryption-as-a-service layer.
- Rotating and revoking secrets through policies and audit logging.
- Integrating cloud, Kubernetes and identity providers for machine authentication.
- Scaling enterprise needs such as namespaces, replication and HSM workflows on Enterprise or HCP.

Who it's for

Platform, DevOps and security engineers who need programmatic secrets management across hybrid and multicloud infrastructure, from Community Edition pilots through regulated enterprise deployments.

Worth knowing

Vault Community Edition is free for production use under the Business Source License (not OSI open source) with restrictions on offering Vault as a competing hosted service. Vault Enterprise and HCP Vault are commercial. Official product pages are on hashicorp.com. Distinct from password managers aimed at end users; Vault targets infrastructure and application secrets. Authorised defensive and operational use only.