Secure AI Model Secrets Management with Vault AWS

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

When managing secrets for AI models or any sensitive data, using a secure storage solution is essential. **HashiCorp Vault** is a tool for secrets management that allows you to store, manage, and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, encryption keys for protecting sensitive data, and other secrets in modern computing. Vault handles leasing, key revocation, key rolling, and auditing.

In the context of Pulumi and AWS, you can use the `vault` provider to create a secret backend in HashiCorp Vault which is responsible for managing and storing secrets. Paired with AWS, you might use roles and policies to control access to the secrets, providing limited access just to the services that need them, like your AI models.

Below is a Python program that uses Pulumi to set up a secure secrets management system using Vault with AWS:

1. **Vault Secret Backend on AWS**: This will store secrets in Vault with an AWS-specific configuration.
2. **Vault AWS Authentication Method**: This component is for the AI services to authenticate with Vault using AWS credentials.
3. **Vault Secret**: This will actually store the data that you want to keep secret, like database credentials or access keys for your AI model.

Here's the Pulumi program in Python:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_vault as vault
import pulumi_aws as aws

# Configure the AWS Provider
aws_provider = aws.Provider('aws-provider', region='us-west-2')

# Configures an AWS secret backend in Vault.
# This backend will manage AWS-based secrets.
secret_backend = vault.aws.SecretBackend('ai-model-secret-backend',
    path='aws',  # The path in which to enable the AWS secret backend
    description='AWS secret backend for AI model',
    region='us-west-2',  # Specify the AWS region
    default_lease_ttl_seconds=3600,  # The default lease duration in seconds
    max_lease_ttl_seconds=86400,  # The maximum lease duration in seconds
)

# An authentication method in Vault for AWS. AI services using AWS can use this to authenticate with Vault.
aws_auth_backend_role = vault.aws.AuthBackendRole('ai-model-auth-backend-role',
    role='ai-service-role', # Name of the role
    backend='aws',  # The backend in which the role exists
    auth_type='iam',  # Authentication based on IAM
    bound_iam_principal_arns=[aws_provider.arn],  # List of ARNs allowed to authenticate
    token_policies=['default'],  # The default policy to assign to authenticated entities
)

# Create a secret in the Vault that you want to store securely, e.g. API keys or database credentials.
# For demonstration purposes, we're just storing a mock password.
database_credentials = vault.kv.SecretV2('ai-model-secret',
    path='database/credentials',  # The path to store the secret data
    mount=secret_backend.path,  # Reference to the AWS Secret Backend
    data_json=pulumi.Output.secret('{"password": "very-secr3t-p@ssw0rd"}').apply(lambda data: data),  # Securely store the secret data
)

# Export the Vault secret path so that you know where to access your AI model secrets
pulumi.export('secret-path', database_credentials.path)
```

Here's what this does:

- It sets up an `aws` provider for Pulumi to interact with your AWS account.
- It then creates an AWS secret backend in Vault where all secrets will be stored and managed.
- Next, it establishes an authentication method for your AI services, allowing them to authenticate to Vault using AWS IAM.
- Finally, it securely stores a fake database password in Vault which your AI models can use to interact with their database.

Please replace the placeholder `very-secr3t-p@ssw0rd` with the actual secret your AI application requires, and ensure real password data is securely administered.

To run this Pulumi program:

1. Set up AWS credentials on your machine.
2. Install both the `pulumi` and `pulumi_vault` Python packages, preferably in a virtual environment.
3. Save this script as `main.py` and then run `pulumi up` to deploy.

After deploying, Pulumi will output the path to the stored secret, which your services can use to retrieve it securely.