Akeyless
Cloud-native SaaS platform for unified secrets management and machine identity security
OpenBao
Securely store, encrypt, and manage dynamic secrets at scale
OpenBao provides encrypted storage, dynamic secret generation, lease management, and revocation for credentials, certificates, and keys, supporting multiple backends and robust audit capabilities.
Overview
Centralized Secret Management
OpenBao is designed for organizations that need a unified system to store, encrypt, and distribute sensitive data such as passwords, API keys, certificates, and cryptographic keys. Secrets are encrypted before being written to persistent storage, and the platform supports a variety of backends—including local disk and PostgreSQL—so you can choose the storage that fits your infrastructure.
Dynamic Credentials and Lifecycle Control
Beyond static storage, OpenBao can generate on‑demand credentials for services like AWS and SQL databases. Each generated secret carries a lease that automatically expires and revokes the credential, reducing the attack surface. Built‑in APIs let clients renew leases, and administrators can revoke individual secrets or entire secret trees, enabling rapid key rotation and incident response.
Deploy OpenBao using the provided binaries or Docker images, integrate with existing CI pipelines, and leverage the extensive acceptance test suite (noting that some tests may create real resources). The project is governed by an open community and follows OSI‑approved licensing.
Highlights
Encrypted secret storage with support for multiple backends
Dynamic secret generation with automatic lease revocation
Standalone data encryption/decryption without persisting secrets
Fine‑grained leasing, renewal, and hierarchical revocation
Pros
- Strong at‑rest encryption protects raw storage
- Dynamic credentials reduce long‑lived secret exposure
- Lease and revocation mechanisms simplify key rotation
- Extensible backend options for diverse environments
Considerations
- Development requires Go toolchain and familiarity with Make
- Advanced configurations can be complex to tune
- Acceptance tests may incur real cloud resource costs
- Importing the repository as a library is not officially supported
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Fit guide
Great for
- Enterprises needing centralized secret management across services
- Teams building microservices that require rotating credentials
- Security groups enforcing audit trails and rapid revocation
- Organizations that prefer self‑hosted solutions with flexible storage
Not ideal when
- Small projects with minimal secret handling requirements
- Users seeking a simple key‑value store without lease features
- Environments lacking Go or Docker for building and testing
- Scenarios that prefer a fully managed SaaS secret service
How teams use it
Dynamic AWS credentials for CI pipelines
Short‑lived keys are issued on demand and automatically revoked, minimizing exposure from compromised pipelines.
Encrypting application data before persisting to SQL
Developers store ciphertext directly in databases without implementing custom encryption logic.
Automated certificate rotation for internal services
Certificates are renewed and distributed without service downtime, ensuring continuous trust.
Revoking compromised user tokens across services
Immediate revocation of a user's secret tree cuts off access everywhere, supporting rapid incident response.
Tech snapshot
Go69%
MDX13%
JavaScript12%
Handlebars4%
SCSS1%
TypeScript1%
Frequently asked questions
How should I report a security vulnerability in OpenBao?
Disclose responsibly by emailing openbao-security@lists.openssf.org.
Which storage backends does OpenBao support?
OpenBao can write encrypted secrets to local disk, PostgreSQL, and other backends configured via its storage plugins.
Can OpenBao generate credentials for cloud providers?
Yes, it can generate dynamic secrets for services such as AWS and SQL databases, with automatic lease expiration.
Do the acceptance tests create real resources?
They can, which may incur costs; run them in isolated accounts and be aware of potential charges.
Is the OpenBao repository intended to be imported as a Go library?
Importing the repository is not a supported use case and bugs related to it may not be fixed.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 5,245
- Watchers
- 5,245
- Forks
- 310
LicenseMPL-2.0
Repo age2 years old
Last commityesterday
Primary languageGo
Last synced 12 hours ago