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| layout | page_title | sidebar_current | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| intro | Vault vs. Amazon Key Management Service | vs-other-kms | Comparison between Vault and Amazon Key Management Service. |
Vault vs. Amazon KMS
Amazon Key Management Service (KMS) is a service provided in the AWS ecosystem for encryption key management. It is backed by Hardware Security Modules (HSM) for physical security.
Vault and KMS differ in the scope of problems they are trying to solve. KMS is focused on securely storing encryption keys and supporting cryptographic operations (encrypt and decrypt) using those keys. It supports access controls and auditing as well.
In contrast, Vault provides a comprehensive secret management solution. The
transit backend provides similar
capabilities as KMS, allowing for encryption keys to be stored and
cryptographic operations to be performed. However, Vault goes much further than
just key management.
The flexible secret backends allow Vault to handle any type of secret data, including database credentials, API keys, PKI keys, and encryption keys. Vault also supports dynamic secrets, generating credentials on-demand for fine-grained security controls, auditing, and non-repudiation.
Lastly Vault forces a mandatory lease contract with clients. All secrets read from Vault have an associated lease which enables operations to audit key usage, perform key rolling, and ensure automatic revocation. Vault provides multiple revocation mechanisms to give operators a clear "break glass" procedure after a potential compromise.
Vault is an open source tool that can be deployed to any environment, and does not require any special hardware. This makes it well suited for cloud environments where HSMs are not available or are cost prohibitive.