IBM Vault

Score8.7 out of 10

26 Reviews and Ratings

What is IBM Vault?

IBM Vault (formerly Hashicorp Vault) is an encryption tool for managing 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.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of an example of writing a secret to Vault. Secrets are always encrypted and written to backend storage.

Screenshot of the secrets menu to manage integrated secrets engines. Secrets Engines are components which store, generate, or encrypt data and are enabled at a path in Vault.

Screenshot of where vault identity has support for groups. A group can contain multiple entities as its members. A group can also have subgroups.

Screenshot of HCP Vault, which provides all of the power and security of Vault, without the complexity and overhead of managing it yourself.

Screenshot of where to view entity client and non-entity client counts.

Screenshot of MFA is built on top of the Identity system of Vault.

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Screenshot of an example of writing a secret to Vault. Secrets are always encrypted and written to backend storage.

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

27.4%

1,287 installations of 4,697

#2 most frequent

Information

21.1%

990 installations of 4,697

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

15.1%

707 installations of 4,697

Verified User

Consultant in Engineering (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IBM Vault for keeping secrets and credentials that are used by multiple microservices using the api calls. We also get great access control on the paths for the secrets so only application that require the specific path will be able to access the secrets.

Pros

Secrets management
Access control
Versioning of secrets

Cons

Complexity of setting up Vault should be simplified
Policy management can be made easier on terraform
Version upgrade of Vault to be made easier

Return on Investment

Good security
User experience is great
Solves the secrets handling perfectly

Usability

Alternatives Considered

AWS Secrets Manager

Fabricio Zubelli

DevOps Engineer in Engineering at Kea (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We leverage HashiCorp Vault capabilities for storing and managing our secrets and company passwords. HashiCorp Vault integrates with applications and tools to enable transparent secure sensitive information retrieval programmatically. By leveraging HashiCorp Vault we can go with IAC/CAC on almost everything we build. HashiCorp Vault also makes it easy to share secrets between team members and the organization.

Pros

Store secrets
Store configurations
Integrate with kubernetes
Audit log of changes
Team secret sharing
Real time in transit encryption

Cons

Session Management is terrible to manage
Monitoring is hard and not enough information
User management
Configuration is too complex
More user friendly UI

Return on Investment

Vault enabled IAC for kubernetes applications
Central configuration for applications
Version Control on secrets
Improved the company security and secret sharing experience
Enabled the PCI compliance for the company

Alternatives Considered

Bitwarden and AWS Secrets Manager

Other Software Used

Cloudflare, Cloudflare Zero Trust Services, Amazon RDS Performance Insights, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Erlon Sousa Pinheiro View profile

DevOps Engineer in Information Technology at Two Hat Security (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

A great repository for credentials and secrets.
Good scalability with its own clustering solution and high availability.
Easy to install like other Hashicorp products, it is based on just one executable.

Cons

Documentation could be better.
The multiple key unseal process can be a problem if the need arises.
It would make more sense if HashiCorp Vault combined with HashiCorp Consul to create a unique product.

Return on Investment

Allowed better access control for credentials, passwords, and important keys.
After we started using HashiCorp Vault, we were able to base our environment 100% as code.
SSH access control that is possible using HashiCorp Vault adds an extra level of security in environments where external remote access is required.

Usability

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Terraform, Amazon Relational Database Service

Marco Urrea View profile

DevOps Engineer in Information Technology at DigitalOnUs (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

Credentials generation
Secret management
Preventing secret sprawling

Cons

UI can improve

Return on Investment

API driven
Versatile
Very useful because sensitive data doesn't exist before reading

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure Key Vault

Other Software Used

Microsoft Azure Key Vault, Azure App Service, Azure Virtual Machines

Jeffrey Severance View profile

Senior Solutions Engineer in Information Technology at Erie Insurance Group (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

The HTTP API you use to write and read secrets is open and can be used by any application.
It keeps our sensitive data/credentials out of our GitLab repositories.
Sealing and unsealing the Vault on demand adds an additional layer of security.

Cons

Vault requires a complex setup when getting started.
Vault requires decisions around the backend type to be made up front.
Vault tokens appear to be managed manually in most cases.

Return on Investment

Vault protects our application data from incidents.
Vault has decreased the time it takes to provide access to sensitive data.
Vault has provided great vault to our information security goals for this year.

Alternatives Considered

Symantec Data Center Security

Other Software Used

CyberArk Privileged Account Security, Gitlab, Terraform

CyberArk Privileged Access Management

Delinea Secret Server

ARCON PAM

IBM Vault

What is IBM Vault?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Information

Finance and Insurance

IBM Vault Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

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Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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Other Software Used

IBM Vault Alternatives