Compare Knox vs. Yandex Lockbox

Knox serves as a secret management platform designed for the secure storage and rotation of sensitive information such as secrets, keys, and passwords utilized by various services. Within Pinterest, a multitude of keys and secrets are employed for diverse functions, including signing cookies, encrypting sensitive data, securing the network through TLS, accessing AWS machines, and facilitating communication with third-party services, among others. The risk of these keys being compromised posed significant challenges, as the process of rotation typically required a deployment and often necessitated changes to the codebase. Previously, keys and secrets at Pinterest were stored in Git repositories, leading to their replication across the company's infrastructure and presence on numerous employee laptops, which made tracking access and auditing who had permission to use these keys virtually impossible. To address these issues, Knox was developed with the intention of simplifying the process for developers to securely access and utilize confidential secrets, keys, and credentials. It also ensures the confidentiality of these sensitive elements while providing robust mechanisms for key rotation in the event of a security breach, thereby enhancing overall security practices. By implementing Knox, Pinterest aims to streamline secret management processes while fortifying its defenses against potential vulnerabilities.

Utilize the management console or API to generate secrets, ensuring that they are securely stored in a centralized location that seamlessly integrates with your cloud services and can be accessed by external systems through gRPC or REST APIs. To enhance security, encrypt your secrets with keys from the Yandex Key Management Service, as all stored secrets are maintained in an encrypted state. You have the option to select from pre-defined service roles that offer fine-grained access control to your secrets, allowing you to establish specific permissions for reading or managing both the secrets themselves and their associated metadata. When creating a secret, you can choose a KMS key to securely store sensitive information such as login-password pairs. A secret can encompass various types of confidential data, including but not limited to login-password pairs, server certificate keys, or keys for cloud service accounts. The service also supports multiple versions of each secret, ensuring that all data remains securely stored in an encrypted format. To further ensure availability, all secrets are replicated across three different availability zones, providing robust data redundancy and reliability in case of any failures.