Secrets Management Pipeline

Hardcoded credentials and static secrets are the root cause of a staggering number of security breaches — and even organizations that use a secrets manager often implement it incorrectly, with overly broad access policies, no rotation, and no audit trail of who accessed what. In this challenge, you will design a comprehensive secrets management pipeline on AWS that handles the full lifecycle of secrets: creation, storage, distribution, rotation, and revocation, with zero-trust access controls and complete audit visibility. The storage layer uses AWS Secrets Manager for application secrets (API keys, database credentials, third-party tokens) and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store (SecureString) for configuration values, with a clear policy defining which service handles which type of secret. Encryption uses customer-managed KMS keys with separate keys per environment (dev, staging, production) and per-team key policies that enforce separation of duties. Automatic rotation is configured for every secret type: RDS database credentials use Secrets Manager's native Lambda-based rotation with a multi-user rotation strategy (alternating between two database users to avoid downtime during rotation), API keys use custom rotation Lambda functions that call the provider API to generate new keys, and TLS certificates use ACM with automatic renewal. The access model uses IAM policies with resource-level conditions: a service can only access secrets tagged with its service name and environment, and access requires both the Secrets Manager permission and the KMS decrypt permission for the secret's encryption key. Emergency access procedures define a break-glass mechanism using a separate IAM role with MFA that can access any secret, with automatic CloudTrail alerting when this role is assumed. The pipeline includes a secret scanning component: a Lambda function triggered by CodeCommit/GitHub webhooks that scans commits for patterns matching secret formats (AWS keys, database connection strings, JWT tokens) and blocks the push while alerting the security team. Compliance reporting uses Athena queries over CloudTrail logs to generate weekly reports showing secret access patterns, rotation compliance, and policy violations. This challenge teaches secrets lifecycle management, encryption key hierarchy design, and the operational patterns for maintaining a zero-trust secrets infrastructure.