Is there a way to create an Azure Automation Credential asset which links to an Azure Key Vault secret? Similar question for a Certificate in Azure Automation.
I want to be able to store my passwords and such all in one place, the Key Vault, so that when I change it I don't have to change it in a bunch of places. I cannot find any documentation that indicates this is possible though. Am I missing it?
Thank you for any suggestions....
You can't link a Credential asset directly to Key Vault, however it should be possible to write a script that connects to Key Vault and updates the appropriate Automation Credentials from there.
This could either be fired on a schedule, a webhook, or by picking up Key Vault events from the new Event Grid (presuming they are currently wired up)
Related
I have developed an Azure Function using visual Studio 2019. now when i deployed the Azure Function inside Azure >> all the settings (which contain some sensitive info) inside the local.settings.json, will be added inside the ""Azure Configuration" >> "App settings"". And as indicated by the page message that those values are stored encrypted, as follow:-
so does this mean that there is no need to take extra steps to secure the sensitive info inside the App setting by using Azure Key Vault ? as those are already secured?
They are secure, but users with permissions to the recourse can potentially access them with a role such as e.g. Contributor. Using a Key Vault would allow you to define access controls more precisely.
As example; Should somebody whose sole responsibility is to manage the resource have access to the secrets?
Also Key Vault allows for some other scenario's like being able to manage secrets centrally or share them across multiple resources (e.g. App Services across multiple regions). And maybe one that's often overlooked; monitoring. E.g. being able to tell 'who' accessed what key at what time.
Edit: link for adding key vault references to your app settings
It is considered a best practice to store any secrets your application might need in a Key Vault. This way, if someone has access to the application that needs to use these secrets in the Azure portal, they would still not have access to the actual secret.
Centralizing storage of application secrets in Azure Key Vault allows you to control their distribution. Key Vault greatly reduces the chances that secrets may be accidentally leaked. When application developers use Key Vault, they no longer need to store security information in their application. Not having to store security information in applications eliminates the need to make this information part of the code. For example, an application may need to connect to a database. Instead of storing the connection string in the app's code, you can store it securely in Key Vault.
Your applications can securely access the information they need by using URIs. These URIs allow the applications to retrieve specific versions of a secret. There's no need to write custom code to protect any of the secret information stored in Key Vault.
Source: About Azure Key Vault - Why use Azure Key Vault? - Centralize application secrets
TL;DR
Do you need to use Key Vault currently? Maybe not, although still depending on how many other people have access to the Subscription / Resource Group / Function App.
Would I advise you to put your secrets in Key Vault? Yes. Especially by doing so now will get you used to working with Key Vault and get you prepared for the future.
EDIT:
For referencing secrets from Key Vault, have a look at Key Vault references. This enables your application to get the secrets from Key Vault without the need for any code change!
For documentation on how to, please see Use Key Vault references for App Service and Azure Functions.
EDIT 2:
even if we store them inside Azure key vault they can be viewed
Yes, but then only if someone has the correct role assignment. If the secret is in Application Settings, anyone with access to the Function App inside of the Azure portal can also see the secrets.
I am moving subscriptions from one tenant of Azure AD to another. I have reviewed and followed the process outlined in this doc. Everything is fine. The next step is about changing the key vault tenant ID for the moved subscription as per this doc. This is where I can't figure out a way to do it in such a way that doesn't involve changing and deploying several application dependent on the Key Vault together with the move. Ideally I would like to associate second tenant (the new one) with the key vault, register the apps in the new tenant and let those application update the configs as per their own release cycle and once all of the applications have updated to use new ClientID/Secret generated in the new Azure AD tenant, I would remove the old tenant association. However a key vault can only be associated with one tenant at any given time. What strategy can be used to allow this transition in smooth fashion without forcing a synchronized deployment of all of the dependent application in one go? It seems the only solution is to create a new key vault associated with the new AD tenant, register apps and issue new ClientID/Secret and let those go live as per their own deployment schedule. Eventually old key vault can be deleted. This seems to be a rather cumbersome approach. Is there any other way?
To make matter even more complicated, storage accounts keys are configured to be managed by key vault and all of the applications use key vault to get access to storage rather than directly using storage account keys. Here also the storage account can only be linked and managed by a single key vault.
Only a single Key Vault object should manage storage account keys.
Don't allow key management from multiple objects.
This would mean even the approach of creating new key vaults and migrating all apps to use these won't work unless the update to the storage-key vault link is synchronized with and deployment of all of the applications that use such storage. Some of these apps are managed by different teams in different timezones so a synchronized deployment is rather difficult plus if any of the app deployment were to rollback, it would either lose access to storage accounts or all of the apps have to rollback.
While this may not be a frequent situation where the subscriptions are moved to a different Azure AD tenant, I am sure it has been done and that is why I would like to get some guidance to how to do this without having to do a synchronized deployments of all of the key vault dependent apps.
Update 1
It so turns out that after moving the subscriptions, the key vault access is in really messed up state. The old tenant's users can't see even the key vault as there is no subscription and new tenant's users can't do anything (can't see keys, secrets, certs or update access policy) as long as key vault's tenant is still old. If the key vault updated to the new tenant, the users still can't see existing keys, secrets and certs. They do get access to update the access policy but the existing keys, secrets and certs are not even viewable from the portal. The Powershell can list/view these but can't update any values! so there is a discrepancy there too. Can someone from Key Vault team confirm these or there should be a big red warning in the Tenant move that it would invalidate access to any existing keys, secrets and certs.
Having a KeyVault move tenants keeps the old tenant value so that existing access policies do not fail. However, when the tenant value is updated to the new tenant, old access policies are invalidated because the identities do not exist in the new tenant and they must be recreated using new identities. This is by-design. Although not official documentation, I blogged about this a while back:
https://azidentity.azurewebsites.net/post/2018/05/16/azure-key-vault-known-portal-issues-the-directory-currently-selected-differs-from-this-key-vault-s-directory
I have several versions of the same web app running on the same subscription service.
I have 2 logical environments. Dev and UAT.
I have WebAppDev and WebAppUAT.
I have two key vaults KVDev and KVUAT.
How can I configure the correct web app to use the correct key vault?
What process assigns the web apps to key vaults?
Edit:
I had assumed that the key vault would act like the secrets do when developing.
This
Tutorial
seems to suggest that the key vault can be used as a configuration provider. However, the web app is not accessing the key vault values.
Get the Object ID from the identity blade of the web app.
Find your azure key vault and create a new access policy using the Object Id of web app.
Alternatively use the following in the powershell cli.
Set-AzKeyVaultAccessPolicy –VaultName -ObjectId "" -PermissionsToKeys backup,create,delete,get,import,list,restore -PermissionsToSecrets get,list,backup,restore,recover
Follow this tutorial and copy the context from the Program.cs in the sample code.
Tutorial
Taking a different angle, the current questions and comments tackle the authentication to KeyVault.
However, it sounds like a more fundamental problem and that you need to vary your configuration per environment.
i.e. WebAppDev needs to be configured to use a KVDev URL and WebAppUAT needs to use KVUAT URL.
Assuming you are using App Service Plans; this documentation provides a mechanism to store environment specific configuration along with guidance on how to use it for your programming language of choice, you will need to refer to the Application Specific configuration section.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-common
Configuring in the portal will get you so far, but over time you will likely wish to contain the configuration in a release management pipeline so you don't need to configure things by hand. Azure DevOps Pipeline is one such tool for this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/get-started/?toc=%2Fazure%2Fdevops%2Fpipelines%2Ftoc.json&bc=%2Fazure%2Fdevops%2Fboards%2Fpipelines%2Fbreadcrumb%2Ftoc.json&view=azure-devops
To get you started there is a specific deployment task which can aid in setting configuration for App Service Plans: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/deploy/azure-rm-web-app-deployment?view=azure-devops
Over time I'd suggest rather than splitting configuration between a Release Pipeline and source control, instead having configuration which doesn't require deployment time modifications instead to stay source controlled in ARM templates, but that is an answer in it's own right so I won't confuse matters with too much detail.
If you want to access Azure key Vault by programming with SDK or REST API, then it would not be a problem. Because different key vaults have different DNS names. When you try to retrieve a secret or key in your code, you need to use its identify URL which contains its key vault DNS name. It will finally find the target key vault.
If you want to use key vault in web app with managed identity, you may refer to the tutorial: Use Azure Key Vault with an Azure web app in .NET
In that tutorial, you will enable the identity of a web app. And then you can assign access policy to that identity. In this way, the web app will be able to access the key vault with managed identity.
Assign secrets only to specific web app created in Azure. For Example: I have created one azure web app with MSI, created key vault with secrets for that app and I have given access to that app to get secrets. Now I have created another azure wep app with MSI, for this also I have created secrets and given key vault access. Now both the app can able to get secrets. But problem is, both app can access both secrets. I need to create app specific secrets. How to do in key vault ?
Create two Key Vaults.
You can't limit which secrets the app can access,
so having two vaults is the only way to isolate them.
You can check out pricing for Key Vault from here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/key-vault/.
Billing for secrets is based on the amount of operations, so while two vaults won't use them as efficiently, the cost should not jump up in significant amounts.
I have a custom activity that runs through and ADF pipeline, with an Azure Batch for the execution. The custom activity needs to access the Azure Key Vault, but I don't want to leave any secrets/keys coded in the custom activity.
How can I get the custom activity to use the service principal to access the Azure Key Vault? I have no problem coding access to the Azure Key Vault using the service principal credentials (appId and key), but I obviously don't want to leave a key in the code.
So the question is: How can an ADF Custom Activity, running in an Azure Batch, access the Azure Key Vault through a service principal?
Thanks!
This is similar to how to access Key Vault from a Azure Batch task. There are some ways to avoid hard-code the secrets in code. One is to use certificate which can be deployed to the Batch VM (https://samcogan.com/secure-credential-access-with-azure-batch-and-keyvault/), or you may use resource file (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/batch/batch-dotnet-get-started#resourcefiles) to provide the secrets.