AWS Key Management Service vs Keywhiz
Overview
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CLI (Node.js)
Manual
Detailed Comparison
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data, and uses Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to protect the security of your keys. AWS Key Management Service is integrated with other AWS services including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Amazon Redshift. AWS Key Management Service is also integrated with AWS CloudTrail to provide you with logs of all key usage to help meet your regulatory and compliance needs. | Keywhiz is a secret management and distribution service that is now available for everyone. Keywhiz helps us with infrastructure secrets, including TLS certificates and keys, GPG keyrings, symmetric keys, database credentials, API tokens, and SSH keys for external services — and even some non-secrets like TLS trust stores. Automation with Keywhiz allows us to seamlessly distribute and generate the necessary secrets for our services, which provides a consistent and secure environment, and ultimately helps us ship faster. |
Centralized Key Management;Integrated with AWS services;Encryption for all your applications;Built-in Auditing;Fully Managed;Low-cost; Secure | Keywhiz Server provides JSON APIs for accessing and managing secrets. It is written in Java and based on Dropwizard.;KeywhizFs is a FUSE-based file system, providing secrets as if they are files in a directory. Transparently, secrets are retrieved from a Keywhiz Server using mTLS with a client certificate.;Presenting secrets as files makes Keywhiz compatible with nearly all software. Outside of Keywhiz administration, consumers of secrets only have to know how to read a file.;KeywhizFs stores all secrets in memory only and never persisted to disk. If KeywhizFs is unmounted or the server loses power, all secrets will be safely removed from that server.;To mitigate a Keywhiz Server outage, KeywhizFs maintains a local cache of previously accessed secrets. Unless the server is rebooted or KeywhizFs unmounted, applications can happily continue accessing secrets previously accessed.;Keywhiz CLI is a Java program for Keywhiz administration. Clients, secrets, and groups can be queried, added, removed, or associated with each other. Users can authenticate and use the CLI.;Keywhiz UI is web app for Keywhiz administration, similiar to Keywhiz CLI. The UI is built with AngularJS. Users can authenticate and use the UI.;Keywhiz makes heavy use of mTLS and X509 certificates. It can even help distribute and rotate them for other services! There is the assumption of a PKI system though. If one does not exist or a PKI is wanted for development consider certstrap for a simple, initial PKI. |
Statistics | |
GitHub Stars - | GitHub Stars 2.6K |
GitHub Forks - | GitHub Forks 216 |
Stacks 231 | Stacks 12 |
Followers 172 | Followers 50 |
Votes 14 | Votes 3 |
Pros & Cons | |
Pros
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What are some alternatives to AWS Key Management Service, Keywhiz?
Vault
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 more. Vault provides a unified interface to any secret, while providing tight access control and recording a detailed audit log.
Doppler
Doppler’s developer-first security platform empowers teams to seamlessly manage, orchestrate, and govern secrets at scale.
IBM SKLM
It centralizes, simplifies and automates the encryption key management process to help minimize risk and reduce operational costs of encryption key management. It offers secure, robust key storage, key serving and key lifecycle management for IBM and non-IBM storage solutions using the OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).
Docker Secrets
A container native solution that strengthens the Trusted Delivery component of container security by integrating secret distribution directly into the container platform.
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle.
EnvKey
Securely store config and manage access in an end-to-end encrypted, auto-syncing desktop app. Connect your apps in minutes in any language with an environment variable and a line or two of code.
Knox-app
Knox is a SaaS (Secrets as a Service) that helps you manage your keys, secrets, and configurations. Start in minutes and close the widest security breach. You cannot keep storing secrets in your git repo or sharing them by email or slack me
Securden Password Manager for Enterprises
Securden Password Vault for Enterprises is a password manager that helps centralize, protect, and streamline all your passwords, keys, DevOps secrets, and other critical credentials for your enterprise or business teams . It is available in both SaaS and on-premise models.
LocalKeys
LocalKeys is a local-first secret manager for developers. It replaces vulnerable .env files with an AES-256-GCM encrypted vault that works completely offline and requires explicit approval before any process can access your secrets.
Ellipticc — Cloud Storage Built for Privacy and Speed
Ellipticc — End-to-end encrypted, post-quantum secure cloud storage for privacy-first users and teams.
