Application-Linked Secret Encryption Across the Software Delivery Pipeline
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing software development environments face security issues with secrets being compromised before they reach a secret repository, particularly in large teams, and centralized vaults pose risks of widespread breaches.
Innovation Solution
A decentralized approach where secrets are encrypted and stored in association with applications, using a key management service to ensure only authorized entities can decrypt them, with end-to-end encryption and no single point of access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If secrets are stored in a centralized vault, then centralized control and access management are improved, but the risk of widespread breach increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments secrets into multiple shares using secret sharing schemes, distributing them across different locations or entities rather than storing them centrally. This eliminates the single point of failure in centralized vaults while maintaining controlled access through threshold mechanisms, where a certain number of shares are required to reconstruct the secret.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements location-aware secret management where secrets are distributed and stored in different geographic locations or cloud regions. Each location holds a portion of the secret, and the system automatically selects appropriate locations for secret retrieval based on application requirements, thereby reducing the impact of localized breaches.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If secrets are distributed across multiple locations, then breach risk is reduced, but access management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a secret management service as an intermediary that handles the complexity of distributed secret management. This service orchestrates secret sharing, retrieval, and rotation across multiple locations, abstracting the complexity from applications while maintaining security. The intermediary manages the threshold schemes and coordinate access without requiring applications to directly handle distributed secret complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal secret management interface that works across different locations, cloud providers, and secret types. The system provides a unified API and management plane that handles various secret sharing schemes, location selections, and access policies through a single system, reducing the perceived complexity for users despite the underlying distributed architecture.
3Reliability
If secrets are encrypted and stored with applications, then access control is improved, but operational overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary secret preparation by pre-generating secret shares and storing them in appropriate locations before applications need them. The system proactively manages secret rotation, renewal, and distribution in advance, reducing the operational burden during actual application operations. Secrets are prepared and validated beforehand, minimizing runtime management overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where applications can automatically retrieve and manage their own secrets through standardized interfaces. The secret management system provides automated secret rotation, health checks, and failure recovery without requiring manual intervention. Applications request secrets as needed, and the system handles the complexity of distributed retrieval automatically, reducing operational overhead.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are disclosed relating to the protection of secrets within a software development lifecycle. Developers can use an encryption service to encrypt a secret to be used by an application within a package. The secret can be associated with the application, and then encrypted and included in a package that is signed and passed through a software automation pipeline to a data center that hosts the production server for the application. The application executing on the production server can request that the secret be decrypted by a decryption service after package verification. A developer can also specify, in a manifest file, a set of secrets needed for applications executing in the same data center. The manifest file may be passed from the software development environment to the data center, where the specified secrets are created and used by the applications without ever residing or being accessible outside the data center.