HashiCorp offers Vault, an encryption tool of use in the management of secrets including credentials, passwords and other secrets, providing access control, audit trail, and support for multiple authentication methods. It is available open source, or under an enterprise license.
$0.03
Yubico YubiKeys
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Yubico YubiKeys make the internet safer with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) by providing simple and secure access to computers, mobile devices, servers, and internet accounts. The Yubico YubiKey stops account takeovers at scale by mitigating phishing and ransomware attacks, and delivers users authentication with a simple touch or tap.
HashiCorp Vault, in my opinion, is a defacto standard for any cloud or automation implementation. They're the best of the best as far as products for secrets management and the ability to use it against relatively any service you have is unheard of for other products. HashiCorp has really taken out all the stops when it comes to creating a nice, extensible tool that people can use to suit their needs.
Yubico YubiKeys will likely always be my default recommendation for hardware security keys. It's well suited for environments where key portability is necessary, and for privileged environments where step-up or separate authentication hardware benefits the situation. For example, I can step up my Microsoft rights through PIM, but I'm required to use a Yubico YubiKey (AAGUID filter) even if I'm already using Windows Hello. This means that accessing my workstation doesn't grant rights, accessing my device AND my Yubico YubiKey does. I wouldn't necessarily recommend deploying Yubico YubiKeys to entire user populaces unless the situation calls for it (shared workstations, compliance environments, etc.). This is primarily centered around user training (which is a low bar, but still different), and dealing with loss (you'll want to budget for a % of key loss and be ready to rapidly issue replacements).
So as I said, the second-factor authentication that it does is really well. The response time is really good and all you have to do is just enter the second factor code and that's about it. Right? So that's the good part about using Yubico YubiKeys.
It can be about access control because either right now it's just you have access or you don't have access. I think there can be a use case where you are allowed a particular set of servers and not a particular set of servers. I think maybe it's there or we don't use it, but I haven't seen that. I think I've used Yubico YubiKeys at two companies and I haven't seen that. Maybe that's something that can be added.
HashiCorp Vault is the best there is out there, and it has become critical to our secret management use cases. It would be difficult to find anything that would suit our needs better and that would be beneficial for us to switch over to.
As for implementing YubiKey its simple so I don't see us using anything else as we have experienced no issues so fare. Adding these to our environment is still new for us currently but in the transition phase I only see us buying YubiKey. It is highly rated and well known and cost is reasonable so no need to find another solution.
We spent a little more time than we imagined to conceptually understand how HashiCorp Vault operates, as well as how it is configured. This is not trivial, and keep in mind that you will need to take some time to get a thorough understanding of the tool. The documentation could be more helpful in this regard.
I give slightly better than average rating because of the complexity in using a Yubikey. It is not as easy as native push notifications for 2FA products, however, it provides much better strength. Rating this higher or lower would be a disservice to people reading this review. If you are in the market for a hardware 2FA tool, Yubikey will be a great asset in your toolbox.
We have not experienced any issues with availability which is very important when you are dealing with a company that holds the keys to the gate. We have had more issues with availability from our SaaS providers before with authentication but that was on their end. YubiKey has worked every time for us over the course of the last 6 or so months we began testing phase.
We have not seen any lag in loading pages and getting into systems or sites. In comparison to other 2FA and MFA options it is actually faster most of the time to authenticate due to not having to type in. We require users to have long passwords and when there is an option given for password less they jump on it with excitement. As we explore going password less on their PC's the YubiKey is going to make their lives a lot easier to access the resources they need.
Hashicorp has been very responsive to our questions and inquiries up to this point. We are currently working on them to develop a more granular permissions model within Vault. We are very close to achieving our objectives with the help of their support team. We do not seem to be in the same time zone which makes it hard for escalated issues.
I figured it all out on my own with the excellent product documentation provided by Yubico. I even managed to produce a backup YubiKey in case I lost my frequently used one. This was crucial when I temporarily lost the original.
Yubico YubiKeys has been a leader in the security key market, and I think they have a new product we just read about two days back and they can store up to a hundred private keys now. So I think this is what it distinguishes them from the market, apart from this, whatever features we need personally and for our customers. So they provide all those features, but versus the other brands.
For us I feel like the ease of deployment has made this product very appealing, overall this will make the scalability very easy for us to push out once we roll out to our users and the management tools that we have looked at will make the admins like me happy as it is clear and easy to use. The rollout process looks to be very straight forward from the demos that we have looked at regarding the enterprise tools.
I think it's the flexibility in being able to let users pick the type of authentications that they want to use. Some are comfortable with the touch device on the physical Yubico YubiKeys. Others prefer the mobile app. So it provides flexibility for our users to choose how they want to authenticate without running a file of our security requirements.
