Users can store all the security credentials in Azure Key Vault, which only authorized users can access.
Managing Director at IdeaBytes
An affordable solution that can be used to store security credentials, which only authorized users can access
Pros and Cons
- "Azure Key Vault allows only identified users to get the credentials and rotates the keys automatically."
- "The solution's usage can be a little better from the user interface point of view."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Azure Key Vault allows only identified users to get the credentials and rotates the keys automatically.
What needs improvement?
The solution's usage can be a little better from the user interface point of view. Azure Key Vault is a little complex from the usage point of view, and users should be able to use it in a much simpler way.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Azure Key Vault for two years.
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December 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Azure Key Vault is a highly stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Azure Key Vault is a highly scalable solution. Our clients for Azure Key Vault are mostly medium-sized businesses.
I rate Azure Key Vault an eight or nine out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Azure Key Vault’s technical support is very good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I rate Azure Key Vault a four or five out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.
What about the implementation team?
Azure Key Vault's deployment doesn't take much time and can be done in a few minutes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Azure Key Vault is an affordable solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate Azure Key Vault's pricing a three out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I am working with the latest version of Azure Key Vault. I would recommend Azure Key Vault to other users because it is scaling up and getting better than other cloud solutions.
Overall, I rate Azure Key Vault an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
DB and Systems Engineer at JCC Payment Systems Ltd
Beneficial secret data storage, reliable, and simple setup
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Azure Key Vault is the secret storage of data."
- "If multiple clouds are to be used it can be difficult and a third party should assist in the implementation."
What is our primary use case?
We are using Azure Key Vault for holding secrets, such as certificates and API management. We're using it for integrating and saving secrets for web applications.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Azure Key Vault is the secret storage of data.
What needs improvement?
If multiple clouds are to be used it can be difficult and a third party should assist in the implementation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Azure Key Vault for approximately six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Azure Key Vault a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability of Azure Key Vault a ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had issues needing support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Azure Key Vault was easy.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others is if they want to do a multi-cloud deployment it should be done by a third party.
I rate Azure Key Vault a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Azure Key Vault
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Azure Key Vault. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
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Founder & Principal Architect at NCompas Business Solutions Inc.
Speeds up the product development life cycle
Pros and Cons
- "This solution speeds up the product development life cycle. That is, the time from the development of the product to the time to market is drastically reduced because of the CI/CD pipelines. You can have your code deployed within a matter of minutes."
- "Azure has great documentation, but I would like to see more use cases pertaining to specific industries. For example, case studies on how to use HIPAA compliant solutions in the healthcare industry or how to use PCI compliant data analytics solutions in the financial technology industry would be helpful."
What is our primary use case?
We use Microsoft Azure Key Vault for the secret management side of things; that's where all our application secrets are stored.
How has it helped my organization?
This solution speeds up the product development life cycle. That is, the time from product development to market is drastically reduced because of the CI/CD pipelines. You can have your code deployed within a matter of minutes. The entire pipeline, unit testing, and insights, even on the mobile apps, are powerful. We can even obtain crash analytics. So the entire life cycle has been really fast. Also, it's pretty easy to develop and then deploy web services within a matter of minutes.
What is most valuable?
The DevOps pipelines and the ease with which you can deploy the code through the CI/CD pipelines have been valuable features.
What needs improvement?
Azure has great documentation, but I would like to see more use cases pertaining to specific industries. For example, case studies on how to use HIPAA compliant solutions in the healthcare industry or how to use PCI compliant data analytics solutions in the financial technology industry would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think the stability is great.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Microsoft Azure Key Vault is very scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support has been absolutely splendid.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate this solution at nine, on a scale from one to ten.
However, if you're not looking to have your application tied to one cloud provider, then you should stay away from this solution. Once you are tied to a particular cloud provider, coming out of it will be very difficult.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Information System Security Engineer at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
Integration with applications is easy, but key rotation needs notable improvement
Pros and Cons
- "The best feature is the integrity of the .NET applications in our company."
- "The big problem with Azure Key Vault is key rotation. We haven't found a good way to synchronize the credentials between the databases and Key Vault."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Azure Key Vault is cloud applications that are being developed and deployed on Azure. In addition, we use it to store secrets that are used for on-premises applications.
What is most valuable?
The best feature is the integrity of the .NET applications in our company.
What needs improvement?
The big problem with Azure Key Vault is key rotation. We haven't found a good way to synchronize the credentials between the databases and Key Vault.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Microsoft Azure Key Vault for about one and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Azure Key Vault is stable. We haven't had issues with it in terms of reliability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Key Vault depends on how we develop applications. The technical part of integrating between the cloud and Key Vault is easy. It's more that the development of life cycle processes needs to be improved. That's one of the big problems. They have to improve it so that all projects and all servers achieve integration easily. But that's not so much an Azure Key Vault issue. It has more to do with the processes of our company.
We don't look at the number of users but, rather, what are called service principals in Azure Key Vault. We have a lot of service principal applications.
How are customer service and support?
Our first step is always to try to find issues ourselves. If we can't handle an issue we escalate the request to a local Microsoft support provider. If they don't have the answer, they go directly to Microsoft.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have been using Azure Key Vault and Centrify. We have begun a migration to CyberArk because our provider told us about a technology change and offered to migrate us from Centrify to CyberArk. We are looking to understand what CyberArk's capabilities are in comparison with Azure Key Vault. We are trying to decide which option is the best one to go with. What we have learned is that each product has particular issues that make us think that we need to keep both. The issue we have is with the rotation of databases and servers. CyberArk accomplishes it better. That's why we are trying to integrate these two solutions.
How was the initial setup?
It's not complex to set up. It's easy to configure secrets.
What can be a little difficult is establishing a good design and governance of the Key Vault repositories. Sometimes it's difficult to understand if we need one key vault or multiple key vaults. Do we need a key vault instance for an environment or do we need multiple key vaults for our databases or maybe multiple key vaults for the segregation of services according to on-premises and cloud? But creating a secret and integrating an application you're going to consume the secret with is easy.
We have four operators responsible for Key Vault and CyberArk.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Azure is cheaper than CyberArk. You can configure a lot of applications with it, but the key rotation issue is there. CyberArk has good key rotation. It integrates with a lot of technologies and a lot of different types of databases. CyberArk is good, but it's quite expensive.
Both Azure Key Vault and CyberArk are paid annually.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Azure Key Vault a seven out of 10 because of the key rotation issues. They are a big problem. The integration of the application is easy, but key rotation is not easy. It needs a lot of improvement.
From what I have seen from CyberArk in terms of services, key rotation, and its integration with technologies, it's quite good. The big problem is its pricing. I would rate CyberArk at 8.5 out of 10.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Managing Director Cybersecurity Architecture at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
Great at managing keys with good scalability and reasonable pricing
Pros and Cons
- "The security on offer seems to be quite good."
- "While the solution already does a great job of managing keys, the solution could probably look at maybe expanding more into mobile devices and endpoints."
What is our primary use case?
Currently, we're looking at how we're going to use it in our dev environment. We actually have another product that we're using. We're going to test out those keys for maintaining our secrets, however, we first have them in our dev and test environment before we roll it out, as another protection area.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable aspect of the product is its ability to keep our admin password accounts for keys and a lot of our high-value assets. It can manage those types of assets. So far, the product does a great job of managing keys.
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
The stability has been very good. We've been happy with it so far.
The security on offer seems to be quite good.
The solution offers very good preferences.
We've found the pricing to be better than our last solution.
What needs improvement?
I don't have any thoughts on areas for improvement at this time.
While the solution already does a great job of managing keys, the solution could probably look at maybe expanding more into mobile devices and endpoints.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've been quite happy with the stability on offer. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Right now, for our environment, we're hoping that it's scalable and it's more cost-effective than the other tools that we were using in the past. Scalability was one of the key things that we were looking at. That said, we have not attempted to scale just yet. That may be in the future.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support has been helpful and responsive. If we ever run into issues we know we can reach out and they can assist us. So far, we're quite satisfied with the level of support our organization receives.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were previously using CyberArk, which was quite costly for us. One of the reasons we are moving away from it is the overall costs involved. This solution seems ot be better in that regard. Also, this product does seem to offer better scalability.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward.
One of the things with the initial setup is just making sure that we understood what all our assets were and what type of things we wanted to capture in that regard. Therefore, it wasn't complex at all. It's just making sure that we did a proper plan and everything at the outset, in order to move forward properly and effectively.
The deployment took us around two to three weeks. We had an implementation strategy, however, we had to have a slow roll out. The whole thing took us about two to three weeks to get everything in place and to start migrating our keys over.
What about the implementation team?
We did not use an outside consultant or implementor during the implementation. It was an internal project. We used one of our customized tools to help us out.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is less costly than our old solution, CyberArk. It's actually substantially cheaper. That said, I don't have the exact pricing off-hand.
What other advice do I have?
We're partners with Microsoft.
Although we just did an upgrade to the latest version, I'm not 100% sure what the current version number we are using is.
We're quite happy with the product. I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Advisory Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Useful password storing, secure, and good support
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Key Vault are the security and convenience of changing passwords in multiple places."
- "I would rate the stability of Microsoft Azure Key Vault an eight out of ten. We use the solution in the data science field. If there is some outage, we did not notice any prolonged outage which would affect our business significantly while working with it."
What is our primary use case?
We use Microsoft Azure Key Vault to store some secrets and then we use them outside in connectors in the Data Factory.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Key Vault are the security and convenience of changing passwords in multiple places.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Microsoft Azure Key Vault within the past 12 months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability of Microsoft Azure Key Vault an eight out of ten.
We use the solution in the data science field. If there is some outage, we did not notice any prolonged outage which would affect our business significantly while working with it.
How are customer service and support?
We did interact with the technical support from Microsoft and we did not have any negative experiences with them.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others is to figure out what your needs are and then start using the solution if it fits.
I rate Microsoft Azure Key Vault a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Cloud Architect at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees
Enables you to run infrastructure as code, to fully automate creation, management of, and access to, keys
Pros and Cons
- "All its features are really valuable. It's really well thought-out. It's a complete turnkey solution that has all the concerns taken care of, such as access control and management. You can use it in infrastructure as code to create key vaults, APIs, PowerShells, CLIs, even Terraform."
- "If you check the capabilities of other key management services across Amazon, HashiCorp, and Google, there are features that Key Vault doesn't have. It could be the case that when you use Key Vault, you might be forced to use a third-party solution to get certain services. If those services could be included in Key Vault, there would be diminished reasons to go for a third-party key management system."
What is our primary use case?
I have used the solution on a couple of projects for a client, mainly for storing credentials and secrets, such as API keys and application or username passwords into the vault, as well as certificates.
It is used for anything we need to keep safe and secure and not have users access, except via applications that programmatically access Key Vault and retrieve the secrets and connect to other APIs. That way, we don't supply usernames and passwords within application code or to people. We vault them in Key Vault and those secrets can be used within an application without human intervention.
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution.
How has it helped my organization?
You have to have this to make sure that you're compliant with security and governance. One of the main concerns with compliance is how you manage keys and secrets in your cloud environments. You're encrypting your data at rest and in transit, but where do you store the encryption key itself to not become compromised? Key Vault addresses all those concerns. This is one of the main tools and, without it, it's hard to implement and address one of the main pillars of cloud architecture, which is security.
The whole nature of it is to help make things autonomous, because you can run infrastructure as code. That really takes away the human factor and you can fully automate the creation and management of, and access to, the keys, including the rotation of the keys. By taking away the human element, it's really secure. And, implementation-wise, when you're using Key Vault, Microsoft is behind it and they're using the best methods for encryption and ciphering of keys. You don't have to worry about those things.
It really simplifies the whole process, in contrast to needing in-house experts to help you facilitate key management. When it comes to two main concerns, encryption of the data in transit and at rest, it is a service that is with you all the time. It has a low cost and it's ready to implement. You don't have to have 10 developers build something that you don't even know will be successful, versus a service that has already been tested across global enterprise companies.
What is most valuable?
All its features are really valuable. It's really well thought-out. It's a complete turnkey solution that has all the concerns taken care of, such as access control and management. You can use it in infrastructure as code to create key vaults, APIs, PowerShells, CLIs, even Terraform.
You can also use it in different services across the board. If you have app services, or virtual machines, Kubernetes, or Databricks, they can all use Key Vault effectively. In my opinion, in a DevSecOps, DevOps, or even in a modern Azure implementation, you have to use Azure Key Vault to make sure you're addressing security and identity management concerns. By "identity" I mean usernames, passwords, cryptography, et cetera.
It's also a regional solution and it frees you up from using third parties like HashiCorp Vault, for example.
In addition, there is a feature in Azure called managed identities, and when storing your credential or any keys or secrets in that you can have your code use managed identities to access Key Vault. That simplifies the whole process of connecting to Key Vault and retrieving your secrets, passwords, and credentials.
It's a full-blown solution and it supports most breeds of key management: how you store keys and certify.
I can't say that one of its features is better than others. You have to have all of them to make it a competent service, although one of the especially important features is the connection with monitoring and logging, so you can see who had access to what.
What needs improvement?
If you check the capabilities of other key management services across Amazon, HashiCorp, and Google, there are features that Key Vault doesn't have. It could be the case that when you use Key Vault, you might be forced to use a third-party solution to get certain services. If those services could be included in Key Vault, there would be diminished reasons to go for a third-party key management system.
For how long have I used the solution?
I was using Microsoft Azure Key Vault until two years ago, but since then I've been actively using it for two or three different projects.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable. There is the SLA and the resiliency that goes with Azure. Because many services are dependent on Key Vault, if it's highly available and redundant, it helps a lot. You can imagine how many times applications would go down if Key Vault were not available. It is one of the high-demand services. Anything that needs to access a key or a certification is dependent on Azure Key Vault.
So far, compared to other services that are available in the Azure environment, I haven't seen anything surprising with the stability or availability of Key Vault.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable and global in its performance. I have implemented it for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the whole world, a company that operates on a global scale. Key Vault is a main ingredient for every one of their infrastructure pieces that is tied to it. The scale of that company in its use of Key Vault was phenomenal.
How are customer service and technical support?
I haven't needed to contact Microsoft support about Key Vault. There have been instances when I have had to talk with Microsoft support about Graph API for Active Directory and other services, and even to the cloud adoption framework team, but never for Key Vault. It is just so straightforward.
How was the initial setup?
The complexity depends on what you're trying to do with Key Vault. It can get complex or it can be simple. You don't expect advanced scenarios to be easy to implement because it has many ingredients. If someone is simply going to Azure portal to create a secret and retrieve it, it's simple. But if you want to tie in your services, and have role-based control over who can access keys, and what services are tied to the keys, it gets complicated. But that's not just Azure. That complexity comes with the level of complexity of the scenario.
Key Vault is easy to use because there are many APIs and mechanisms to create and retrieve. The concepts are easy. I use it in many scenarios, such as building infrastructure as code, consuming it in Kubernetes. Everything seems to be straightforward. It is really the de facto for key management and vaulting secrets.
For example, one of the applications recently we developed needed to store the username and password of the service that connects to SQL Server. I found it was super-easy to tie the credentials within the application configuration files to Key Vault to retrieve the keys. It was a no-brainer for a developer to learn and do it. It took about 15 to 30 minutes to follow the documentation. And it has really nice documentation. Performing any action using the features of Key Vault is really easy as it's user-friendly. Depending on your level of skill, the deeper you get, the more features you can use.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Key Vault, like every Azure service, has a cost associated with it, but you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to spin up an environment to build a key management system. It's already there.
You pay as you go, similar to other services in Azure.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There are many other tools that I am still using, including AWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk, and Conjur, but none of them is close to Key Vault.
One of the benefits of Azure Key Vault is its integration with Active Directory, as is the case with most of the services in Azure. That really adds something to all the services.
Also, Managed HSM is not available in those other solutions. You have to go with HashiCorp Vault to get that.
In addition, the key rotation feature of Key Vault is a lot better than in AWS Secrets Manager. CyberArk and Conjur, are more one-off products for specific use cases. You have to purchase a license and implement and manage them yourself, and not everything works seamlessly in CyberArk.
Conjur was good until Key Vault supported containerization. Azure created services for using blob storage, and those features of Key Vault came naturally as part of the whole cloud stack.
Key Vault covers different problems for various personas and roles. As a developer, you get a lot of benefits that you don't get when you start developing with other tools, excluding HashiCorp Vault. HashiCorp Vault is really neat, and the only downside is that you have to manage the infrastructure yourself.
What other advice do I have?
I'm a cloud architect. If I don't see that Key Vault has been included in a proposed architecture, I don't approve it. It's a main ingredient in any cloud enterprise infrastructure and architecture. When you're using Azure, you have to have this or a third-party solution. If someone shows me a third-party solution, I have to ask, "What's the cost of owning this component that you're adding to the architecture? Is it included, like Key Vault, or do you have to pay for it like with HashiCorp Vault?" With Azure Key Vault you have something that is free, enterprise-level, global, and it just works.
I don't know if we could survive without Key Vault in a cloud implementation and still call it a secure platform. These days, you have to have Azure Key Vault or some third-party mechanism such as HashiCorp Vault. You need something that addresses key management in your cloud environment. But why should you pay for extra resources, costs, and management overhead, if everything is managed by Azure itself?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Microsoft Cybersecurity specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Affordable with the ability to store security certificates securely
Pros and Cons
- "It allows me to run applications using these certificates without directly installing them."
- "The platform's configuration process could be easier."
What is our primary use case?
The product integrates well with Azure Active Directory to manage identity or secret certificates.
What is most valuable?
Azure Key Vault's most valuable feature is its ability to store security certificates securely. It allows me to run applications using these certificates without directly installing them.
What needs improvement?
The platform's configuration process could be easier. Most of the new technologies involve certain prerequisites and complex setup processes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Azure Key Vault for a long time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the product's stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product's scaling process is complex for users who are not familiar with its concept. It is suitable for small to enterprise businesses.
I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup process takes 15 minutes to complete for me as I have prior experience working with it. The non-proficient users need professional assistance. In most cases, they need to be notified about the necessity of authenticating the user ID and password.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product has good pricing.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Azure Key Vault to others and rate it a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Updated: December 2024
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