VAULT comparison №7

Hashicorp vs KeyWhiz

This time we compare two brands with Open Source secrets management software - Hashicorp Vault Open Source Edition and KeyWhiz from Square.

While Hashicorp is widely known Keywhiz is not, it has been developed for internal purposes of Square and its server provides JSON APIs for accessing and managing secrets.

Which solution is better?

Deployment and setup

There is massive evidence regarding Hashicorp - it's not easy to implement when using Open Source edition, especially when you need to deliver High Availavility and Disaster Recovery capabilities. Enterprise edition is much easier to implement and manage - including HA and DR capabilities, but it can cost you a fortune for bigger environments.

Keywhiz is quite straight-forward to implement, but take a note further - it has limited functionality so it's hard to compare apples to apples there.

Scalability and flexibility

Hashicorp Vault has immense number of plug-ins and operators aiming at support nearly all tech - both on-premise and AWS. Although, high-availability is not coming with Open Source and you'll need to apply a bunch of tricks achieving it.

There is no production-ready receipts how to implement proper high-availability and data recovery in Keywhiz, at the same time we store secrets in external database (for instance PostgreSQL) and can implement HA&DR in database level.

Hashicorp and KeyWhiz:
Key Differences

Pricing

Hashicorp has a free (Open Source) edition, and most important - a lot of people know how to manage it so skills are available on the market.

Keywhiz can be more effective is a specific case needs just its functionality and is OK with extended windows of Data Recovery in the case of failure.

Summary

KeyWhiz can be an interesting option when it fits your requirements and you have an established technology stack and business model.

Hashicorp can be wiser choice if you need stronger HA or need sheer availability of technical skills.

Each option solves a secrets management problem but bring a new problem - you'd have to implement and maintain it. If you consider getting help with this - check out our DevSecOps as a Service.

If you are not ready to consider the implementation of a tool - you can check out our Kubernetes Penetration Testing Service.

Still looking? Check our other secret management comparisons:

Cyberlands.io Team