Secrets Management With IBM Vault On IBM Z and LinuxONE

Using IBM Vault and IBM Nomad on IBM Z and LinuxONE to unlock safe secrets management and streamline orchestration

IBM are releasing the IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE and IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE products to the broader public today in response to the announcement of the HashiCorp Acquisition. With standardised secret management from IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE and a versatile container orchestration environment from IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE, this enhances the end-to-end hybrid cloud platform.

Secrets management: striking a balance between deployment speed and security

API keys, passwords, and certificates are examples of sensitive data that may be kept safe while still being available to authorised apps to standardised secrets management. The goal of centralising machine identity management throughout the hybrid estate is to assist businesses in implementing security rules in each environment in a proactive and uniform manner. Conversely, simplified container orchestration seeks to eliminate the complexity of conventional orchestration technologies while streamlining application deployment, scaling, and management.

For application runtime management to be effective, security and developer-friendliness must be balanced. Depending on variables like team experience, automation maturity, and infrastructure complexity, deployment duration might differ significantly. The influence of security readiness on deployment schedules is highlighted by the fact that IBM have also observed that some organisations have postponed application deployments because of security concerns.

The purpose of IBM Vault Self-Managed, IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z, and LinuxONE is to assist IT organisations in automating processes for managing secrets and orchestrating containers in order to improve their security posture and shorten deployment times.

Using IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE to Securely Manage Secrets

High-performance enterprise applications, which frequently handle sensitive financial and business data, are built into IBM Z and LinuxONE. Businesses that use Linux on IBM Z, z/OS, or hybrid cloud environments can benefit from LinuxONE and IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z in the following ways:

1. Centralised and Encrypted Secrets Storage: Designed to facilitate dynamic secret generation for databases, APIs, and middleware, as well as to store and manage secrets for IBM Z applications.
2. Role-based access control, or RBAC, establishes fine-grained access rules for various individuals, workloads, or applications and applies the least privilege principle to hidden access.
3. Secrets Rotation: Designed to minimise human participation and operational overhead, this feature rotates credentials for IBM Z workloads to mitigate security threats.
4. Encryption-as-a-Service: Use IBM Vault’s cryptographic features to encrypt sensitive data while it’s in transit and at rest, and delegate encryption management to IBM Vault rather than the application level.
5. Hybrid Cloud & Multi-Cloud Security: Designed to facilitate smooth integration with Kubernetes systems on IBM Z and handle secrets across cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or IBM Cloud.

Workload orchestration using LinuxONE and IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z

High-performance computing, smooth DevOps procedures, and effective workload scheduling are all made possible with IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE.

The purpose of IBM Nomad is to assist organisations:

• Unify Orchestration for Mixed Workloads: Effectively deploy workloads across Linux on IBM Z and hybrid cloud environments; run and manage containerised (Docker, OCI) and some non-containerised apps on IBM Z.
• Batch and High-Performance Computing (HPC) Scheduling: Designed to manage idle capacity and enhance performance by dynamically allocating infrastructure resources.
• Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Deployment: Designed to make workload mobility easier and to facilitate smooth workload orchestration across IBM Z, IBM Cloud, and well-known third-party public clouds.

IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE are designed to improve security and automation for mission-critical workloads when combined with IBM Z. Additionally, IBM Vault is designed to assist you in fulfilling your regulatory compliance requirements. The purpose of LinuxONE and IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z is to offer a lightweight container deployment solution for workload orchestration on IBM Z.

What is Secrets Management?

Passwords, API keys, encryption keys, certificates, and database credentials must be protected from cyberattacks. This process is known as secrets management. It guarantees that secrets are appropriately cycled, encrypted, and only accessible by apps or users with permission.

What Makes Secrets Management Crucial?

• Stops illegal access and data breaches.
• Guarantees adherence to security regulations such as SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA.
• Minimises human mistake by automating the rotation and expiration of credentials.
• Enhances security in containerised, cloud, and DevOps environments.

How Secrets Management Operates:

• Secure Storage: Information is kept in a vault and encrypted.
• Role-based access control (RBAC) and authentication are used in access control.
• Automated Rotation: To lower risks, secrets are updated on a regular basis.
• Audit Logging & Monitoring: Monitors the history of access and secret usage.

Secrets management tools

• The HashiCorp Vault
• Secrets Manager on AWS
• Azure Key Vault
• Secret Manager for Google Cloud
• Conjur from CyberArk

To ensure that sensitive data is always protected, secrets management is crucial for safeguarding cloud environments, DevOps workflows, and contemporary applications.