AWS Secrets Manager vs Strongbox: What are the differences?

## Introduction

Key differences between AWS Secrets Manager and Strongbox are highlighted below.

1. **Integration with AWS Services**: AWS Secrets Manager seamlessly integrates with other AWS services such as RDS, Redshift, and Lambda, allowing for easier access and management of secrets within the AWS ecosystem. On the other hand, Strongbox provides a universal interface for storing and accessing secrets regardless of the platform, making it versatile for hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

2. **Access Control**: AWS Secrets Manager offers fine-grained access control using IAM policies to regulate who can retrieve or manage secrets, granting permissions based on roles and access levels. In contrast, Strongbox relies on its own role-based access control mechanism, providing additional flexibility in defining access permissions and authorization rules tailored to specific use cases.

3. **Secrets Encryption**: AWS Secrets Manager automatically encrypts stored secrets using AWS KMS, ensuring data security at rest. Strongbox also supports encryption at rest but allows users to choose from a variety of encryption mechanisms, including cloud-specific or custom encryption solutions, providing more flexibility in securing sensitive information.

4. **Monitoring and Auditing**: AWS Secrets Manager offers built-in monitoring and alerting capabilities, enabling users to track access to secrets, detect suspicious activities, and receive notifications for potential security breaches. Strongbox, on the other hand, provides extensive auditing features, including detailed logs and reports on all secret-related operations, facilitating compliance with regulatory requirements and security standards.

5. **High Availability and Redundancy**: AWS Secrets Manager guarantees high availability and redundancy through multi-AZ replication and fault tolerance mechanisms, ensuring continuous access to secrets even in case of failures or outages. While Strongbox also supports high availability configurations, it prioritizes fault tolerance and data replication across geographically distributed nodes for enhanced resilience and disaster recovery capabilities.

6. **Customization and Extensibility**: AWS Secrets Manager offers a user-friendly interface and API for managing secrets, with limited customization options compared to Strongbox. Strongbox, on the other hand, provides extensive customization features, including plugins, extensions, and integrations with third-party tools, allowing users to adapt the platform to their specific needs and workflows.

In Summary, AWS Secrets Manager and Strongbox differ in their integration with AWS services, access control mechanisms, encryption options, monitoring capabilities, high availability features, and customization abilities.