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Cloud Computing & DevOps vocabulary · Security and Access Control

Secret

Meaning in cloud computing & devops, with examples

/ˈsiːkrɪt/nounCore term

In cloud computing & devops, secret means: A sensitive value that a system needs to work, such as a password, API key, token or private key, which must be stored safely and never shown in code or logs.

In Turkish: gizli bilgi, parola ve anahtar, secret

How it is used

Secrets are stored in tools such as HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault, injected at runtime and rotated regularly. A 'leaked secret' in Git history must be rotated at once, not just deleted.

Example sentences

  1. Someone committed a secret to the repo, so we rotated the key within the hour.

  2. The app reads its database password from the secret store at startup.

Common collocations

  • store a secret
  • rotate a secret
  • secrets manager
  • leaked secret
  • Kubernetes Secret
  • IAMShort for identity and access management: the system that controls who or what can sign in to a cloud account and what they are allowed to do there.
  • encryptionTurning data into an unreadable form that can only be turned back with the right key, so that people without the key cannot read it.
  • least privilegeThe security principle that every user, service or program should get only the permissions it really needs for its job, and nothing more.
  • YAMLA human-readable text format for configuration files that uses indentation and simple 'key: value' lines. Most DevOps tools are configured with it.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Security and Access Control

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