What would be the best way to store credentials in Azure Automation? Azure Automation Assets or Azure Key Vault?
Unless there’s a particular reason to store the cred in keyvault. E.g single source of truth etc. It would be best to store as a credential asset in the run book. There a variety of reason for this, which include:
inclusion in graphical run book
ease of retrieving the credential in one line of PowerShellGet-AzureRmAutomationCredential
The biggest reason for not storing it in key vault is because with the cred in the keyvault you would have to manage the access policies associated with the keyvault and will change the sort of run book you need.
It depends on the use case and the level of confidentiality you want to maintain with those credentials.
With Azure Vault, you will have to manage/create policies for the credential access, and also add few lines into your PowerShell script to access those credentials. This can enhance the security but might create an overhead depending on the use case. For example, if you are storing service principal key, I would say go for the Key vault.
Azure Automation Credentials can be accessed easily by anyone that has access to the resource group or subscription. By adding a simple PowerShell commands, passwords can also be retrieved as plain text from the Credentials, like this:
$(Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name $name).GetNetworkCredential().Password.ToString()
However, for storing credentials that are used during deployments or are changing every now and then, Automation Credential is a good use case.
Related
Like most Azure Functions in the beginning we have a connection string to the associated storageaccount that includes the Accountkey like this
DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=ourstorageAccount;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net;AccountKey=WQfbn+VBhaY1fi/l0eRBzvAvngiCiOwPmx/==
We obviously want to remove that AccountKey. I had hoped we could use ManagedIdentity and the 'Contributor' Role but what I am reading is telling me you cannot use Managed Identity to access Tables in a Storage Account only Blobs.
I know that we could move the whole connection string to KeyVault but that just becomes ann Azure Management Issue if we want to rotate the keys.
Has anyone succesfully controlled access to Azure Table Storage with Managed Identities?
If not what is the next best approach that preferably allows for simple rotation of keys?
Has anyone successfully controlled access to Azure Table Storage with Managed Identities?
Definitely it is unable to access azure table storage with MSI(managed identity, essentially it is a service principal in azure ad), when using MSI to access some azure resources, it essentially uses the azure ad client credential flow to get the token, then uses the token to access the resource.
However, azure ad auth just supported by azure blob and queue storage, table storage doesn't support it currently, see - Authorize access to blobs and queues using Azure Active Directory.
If not what is the next best approach that preferably allows for simple rotation of keys?
You could use azure function to do that, follow this doc - Automate the rotation of a secret for resources with two sets of authentication credentials, I think it completely meets your requirement, this tutorial rotates Azure Storage account keys stored in Azure Key Vault as secrets using a function triggered by Azure Event Grid notification.
Good morning!
want to take backup of azure key vaults secretes blob storage using power shell.
i,m able to take backup to my local machine. team any help? suggestion pls?
There isn't a direct mechanism to achieve this. You will indeed need to have an intermediary PowerShell process to download the secrets and upload them to blob storage.
Using blob storage as a medium for backup is okay provided you fully understand the implications and mitigate the risks. You should at the very least ensure your storage account resides in a different region to your KeyVault for continuity reasons, and have appropriate controls in place to prevent unauthorized access. You must also appreciate that the transportation of secrets is ultimately protected by a RSA 2048-bit key encrypting key (KEK). You should apply key equivalency principles when making consideration for the security of your secrets in transportation outside of the Microsoft network. You should also consider the security of the machine from which you run PowerShell on. Using an automation account in Azure to run the PowerShell using a service principal may be better.
To send a file to blob storage using PowerShell, please see this article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-quickstart-blobs-powershell
I am reviewing requirements for Azure KeyVault and I would like to store service accounts (username/password) in Azure KeyVault. Is it a best practice to encrypt the secret before storing in Azure KeyVault? Does Azure KeyVault encrypt the secret automatically? (both disk and logical).
I think you would like to store your credential like API-Keys, Certificate, Passwords or anything related to sensitive information ensuring more security right?
Well, As you may know cloud applications and services use cryptographic keys and secrets to help keep information secure.
For highly sensitive data, you should consider additional layers of protection for data. Encrypting data using a separate protection key prior to storage in Key Vault is worthwhile for example.
Azure Key Vault:
Azure Key Vault provides safeguards for following keys and secrets.for example, When you use Key Vault, you can encrypt authentication keys, storage account keys, data encryption keys, .pfx files, and passwords by using keys that are protected by hardware security modules (HSMs).
Key Vault reduce following problems:
Secret management
Key management
Certificate management
Store secrets backed by HSMs
Any Third party sensitive credentials
You could check for more details here
Access Your Key Vaults More securely
You may need to access your key vault more securely because of its data sensitivity learn more about Secure access to a key vault
How secret and Certificate collaborate with azure key vault
Also for key vault secret and certificate you can check here
Azure key vault quick start
Setting up and retrieve a secret from Azure Key Vault using the Azure portal you can quickly start from Microsoft official document for azure key vault
Best Practices:
As you know azure key vault preserves data with encrypted mode so its not necessary to encrypt again but you can for double. Here is some best practice while using azure key-vaults
Lock down access to your subscription, resource group and Key Vaults
(RBAC)
Create Access policies for every vault
Use least privilege access principal to grant access
Turn on Firewall and VNET Service Endpoints
For more details you could refer this docs
Note: Now a days azure key-vaults become more popular among the big organizations and towards the developer as well to manage large scale
of security key , certification and many more. For more details I
would recommend to take a look official document here
If you have any more query feel free to share. Thanks and happy coding!
I have two Azure Blob Storage containers. Container A and B. I would like to grant Read only access to another Azure User for Container-A. The second container Container-B should not be visible to the Azure user. The Azure user will be accessing the blobs in Container-A from his Azure Virtual Machine. How do I achieve this? Reading on the web seems that I would need to generate Shared Access Signature, but how I am not sure.
Exactly, that is the scenario where you want to use SAS.
First, please read the Azure Storage security guidance to make sure that you are aware of all of the available options.
Here is the very helpful guidance on the SAS model.
Second, you need to generate the SAS with policies (please, refer to the guidances above). It can be done programmatically (sources are available in the guidance) and then you may give that SAS link to user you want anyway you want - it can be the online page where the user can grab the string, or you can write the simple tool to generate the SAS. Be aware, however, that they have the "life" and you need to renew them periodically.
I'm a bit confused about how to store keys (for data encryption) in Windows Azure.
According to the following two links (#1, #2), it is recommended to store the keys/key library in the Windows Azure Storage:
Storing your own key library within the Windows Azure Storage services is a good way to persist some secret information since you can rely on this data being secure in the multi-tenant environment and secured by your own storage keys.
But the "Security Best Practices For Developing Windows Azure Applications" (#3) recommends NOT to store any key related material in Windows Azure:
Also, developers should not upload
the key or any keying material to Windows Azure Storage, regardless of how careful they are about hiding it. If
any computer or storage services were compromised, it could lead to encryption keys being exposed.
What is the best approach to store keys for encryption in Windows Azure?
You'll see from my comment in that first link that I agree with your concerns. :)
Azure has no secure way of storing keys other than it's own Certificate Storage. Here is an article on using this method:
Field Note: Using Certificate-Based Encryption in Windows Azure Applications
You'll notice I've also commented on that article's shortcomings too, linking to this question:
Read azure ServiceConfiguration file's certificate section using c#
An example of using Azure's built in certificate storage to encrypt AES keys (avoiding the RSA restrictions on encrypted data length, while keeping the AES key secure) can be found in this project:
Codeplex: Azure Table Encryption via Attribute
The SymmetricKeyHelper class in the EncryptDecrypt project is of particular interest.
Kudos to #breischl for mentioning it, and for his contributions to the project.
The Azure Key vault service that has been released recently might be a perfect fit for the problem. This has been introduced so that keys can be managed in a central place and access can be easily controlled. It also supports HSM-backed service making it very secure.
Here is a artice on Getting Started with Azure Key Vault
For future Googlers - I've implemented the solution that Stuart Pegg describes above, but decoupled from Azure Tables.
See https://www.fasterweb.io/Blog/two-way-encryption-for-azure-web-roles for a writeup, or https://gist.github.com/strommen/20905504949072fe5e16 for just the code.
There’s always a risk. If someone gains access to your storage account using any means (such as using a tool), they may be able to find out your key. So in the end, it is needed to protect the storage account itself from accessed by unauthorized access.
For example, please do not allow a developer to access the production storage account. This includes don’t allow them to access the account using tools. Please protect the storage account key and do not leak any information in any application.
Only storage administrators (and developers who you 100% trust) can have full access to the production storage account. Then you’re safe to store the key in your storage account.
I know that this may be a bit late, but if anyone is looking for a quick and easy implementation of encryption for Azure Websites, I've created a (Azure.Security and the source code is currently on GitHub. The project is loosely based on the Codeplex: Azure Table Encryption via Attribute project but it is a lot more straightforward and easy to use. A blog post will follow shortly with instructions on how to set it up and use it.