Centralizing AI Application Secrets Management with Azure Key Vault

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Centralizing the management of secrets for an AI application is critical to maintaining the security and integrity of the application. Azure Key Vault is a cloud service that provides a secure storage for secrets, keys, and certificates. With Azure Key Vault, you can safeguard and control cryptographic keys and secrets used by cloud applications and services.

Here, we'll create an AI application's secrets management using Azure Key Vault with Pulumi, an infrastructure as code tool. We will set up an Azure Key Vault, add secrets to it, and configure an Azure App Service to use these secrets.

Below is a Pulumi program written in Python that will:

1. Create a Resource Group—A container that holds related resources for an Azure solution.
2. Create a Key Vault—The central location for storing secrets for your AI application.
3. Set a secret in the Key Vault—Store a fictitious secret value which could be an API key or a connection string needed by your application.

Please note that for this AI application instance, a placeholder for the secret is used. In a real-world scenario, you would replace it with the actual secret values your application requires.

Let's take a look at the program:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_azure_native as azure_native

# Create an Azure Resource Group
resource_group = azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup('ai-secrets-rg')

# Create an Azure Key Vault
key_vault = azure_native.keyvault.Vault('ai-secrets-vault',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    properties=azure_native.keyvault.VaultPropertiesArgs(
        tenant_id=pulumi.config.require("tenantId"), # Replace with your Azure Tenant ID
        sku=azure_native.keyvault.SkuArgs(
            family='A',
            name='standard',
        ),
        access_policies=[], # You can specify access policies here
    ),
    location=resource_group.location
)

# Add a secret to the Azure Key Vault
my_secret = azure_native.keyvault.Secret("mySecret",
    properties=azure_native.keyvault.SecretPropertiesArgs(
        value="MySuperSecretValue", # Replace with your actual secret value
    ),
    secret_name="MySecret",
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    vault_name=key_vault.name,
)

# Export the Azure Key Vault URI and Secret ID
pulumi.export('key_vault_uri', key_vault.properties.apply(lambda prop: prop.vault_uri))
pulumi.export('secret_id', my_secret.id)
```

### How the Program Works

- We start by importing the required Pulumi Azure Native SDK modules.
- Next, we create an Azure Resource Group that provides a namespace within which all the Azure resources will reside.
- Following that, we initialize the Azure Key Vault, specifying its properties, such as the tenant ID and the SKU. The tenant ID is your Azure AD tenant's unique identifier.
- We then create a secret within the Key Vault. The `value` argument is where you'll set your actual secret that the application needs.
- After setting everything up, we use Pulumi's `export` function to output the Key Vault URI and the Secret ID so that they can be accessed easily if needed—for example, to configure CI/CD or integrate other services.

To get this program to work, you would need an Azure subscription and the Pulumi CLI set up and logged in.

Please replace placeholder values such as `"tenantId"` and `"MySuperSecretValue"` with the actual tenant ID for your Azure account and the secret value you want to store.

Note: It is important to manage your secrets carefully. Do not hard-code them into your source code or Pulumi program files. Use Pulumi's configuration system or environment variables when running the Pulumi CLI to set these values securely.