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17/08/2026 4:38 pm
TL;DR: Enterprises still struggle to secure, rotate, and audit API keys, certificates, and passwords at scale, and Akeyless argues that vault-based models are falling behind cloud, hybrid, and compliance demands. The real issue is not storage alone but whether secrets governance can keep pace with distributed workloads, automated rotation, and zero-standing-privilege access.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Akeyless: Enterprise Secrets Management Solution for Modern Enterprises
By the numbers:
- Only 44% of organisations are currently using a dedicated secrets management system.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern cloud secrets across DevOps and runtime systems?
A: Treat secrets as lifecycle-managed NHI credentials, not static configuration values.
Q: When does vaulting stop being enough for secrets management?
A: Vaulting stops being enough when the organisation cannot answer where secrets are copied, who owns them, and whether they are still valid after exposure or workload change.
Q: When should teams prioritise zero standing privilege for machine identities?
A: Prioritise zero standing privilege when a credential can reach production systems, cloud control planes, or sensitive data stores.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory secrets by usage path Map every API key, certificate, password, and token to the application, pipeline, workload, or service account that consumes it.
- Align rotation with workload lifecycle Set rotation and revocation rules based on deployment cadence, ownership changes, and offboarding events rather than static calendar intervals.
- Eliminate hardcoded secrets from delivery paths Block secrets in source control, CI/CD variables, build logs, and configuration files by using runtime injection and policy checks in the delivery pipeline.
What's in the full article
Akeyless' full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Detailed feature breakdowns for vaultless deployment, distributed fragments cryptography, and gateway placement.
- Product-level explanations of secrets injection, runtime access paths, and multi-cloud integration patterns.
- Compliance and scalability claims tied to enterprise use cases such as Kubernetes, certificates, and password governance.
- Implementation-oriented descriptions of how the platform handles rotation, audit logging, and high availability at scale.
👉 Read Akeyless's analysis of enterprise secrets management at scale →
Enterprise secrets management: are traditional vaults keeping up?
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17/08/2026 4:44 pm
Enterprise secrets management is now an identity governance problem, not just a storage problem. The article correctly frames secrets as credentials that must be issued, rotated, audited, and retired across applications and workloads. That means secrets management sits squarely inside IAM, PAM, and NHI governance, especially where service accounts and machine identities depend on those credentials. The practical conclusion is that teams should govern secrets as live identities with lifecycle state, not as static blobs in a vault.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88% of security professionals are concerned about secrets sprawl, with 49% of those in larger organisations described as "very concerned", according to The 2024 State of Secrets Management Survey.
- 54% of organisations are dissatisfied with their current secrets management solution because not all secrets are secured, and 43% cite lack of central management.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should organisations evaluate secretless access for AI agents and workloads?
A: They should ask whether the authentication path removes portable secrets without breaking auditability, policy enforcement, or recovery. Secretless access is useful only if the trust chain is still explicit and accountable. If the design hides where identity comes from, it simply moves the risk instead of reducing it.
👉 Read our full editorial: Enterprise secrets management is shifting beyond traditional vaults
