Why Organizations Choose Vault

The Multi-Cloud Identity Challenge

In today’s hybrid and multi-cloud environments, applications often depend on separate identity providers (IDPs) across on-premises and public clouds. On-premises systems typically authenticate against Microsoft Active Directory or LDAP. Meanwhile, public cloud workloads each use their own IDP:

AWS workloads authenticate with AWS IAM
Azure services rely on Azure Active Directory
GCP applications leverage Google Cloud IAM

As organizations migrate, containerize, or adopt immutable infrastructure across clouds, this fragmentation leads to:

Operational overhead from maintaining multiple integrations
Security risks due to inconsistent credential lifecycles
Developer confusion over which credentials to use

Vault: Your Unified Secrets Gateway

HashiCorp Vault centralizes identity and secret management, providing a single integration point for applications. Instead of coding against each cloud’s API, apps authenticate to Vault. Vault then dynamically issues or retrieves credentials from your existing IDPs: Active Directory, AWS IAM, Azure AD, or Google Cloud IAM.

The image illustrates why organizations choose Vault, showing connections from AWS, Azure, and GCP to a central Vault, with a building and a person at a computer.

Core Benefits

Dynamic secrets: On-demand credentials with configurable TTLs
Consistent policy enforcement: Centralized, versioned access controls
Simplified developer experience: One API endpoint for all secrets
Enhanced security posture: Short-lived credentials reduce blast radius

Note

Vault’s dynamic secrets engine issues credentials at runtime and automatically revokes them at expiration, eliminating manual key rotation.

Advanced Secret Management Features

Transit Secrets Engine: Encryption-as-a-service for data-in-transit
Static Secrets Storage: Secure key/value store for API keys, tokens, certificates
Leasing & Renewal: Automatic credential renewal and revocation
Audit Logging: Detailed, tamper-proof audit trails

The image illustrates why organizations choose Vault, showing connections between a building, AWS, Azure, GCP, and a computer, all linked to a central Vault icon. It suggests centralized management of cloud services and security.

Comparing Integration Approaches

Integration Method	API Endpoints	Management Effort	Policy Consistency
Native IDP integrations	AWS IAM, Azure AD, GCP IAM	High	Variable
Vault Centralization	Single Vault API	Low	Uniform

Links and References

Watch Video

Watch video content